


Jaebum's Body

by pepijr



Category: GOT7, JJ Project
Genre: 90s, Alternate Universe - High School, Burnout Jaebum, Choose Your Own Adventure, Light Horror, M/M, Mathlete Jinyoung, Pigs, a handjob
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2019-11-07 05:31:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17954477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepijr/pseuds/pepijr
Summary: Jaebum and Jinyoung used to be childhood friends, yet, after some years spent drifting apart, they're no better than strangers. But a strange night and a disappearance might change everything.* * *A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story: each chapter ends with three choices that affect the story. Vote by commenting the choice, or suggest your own, and the next chapter will be written accordingly. Based on Jennifer's Body (2009).





	1. old friends .

**Author's Note:**

  * For [comingbacktoyou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/comingbacktoyou/gifts).



> so, this is a choose your own adventure fic which means that i'll post a chapter, then end it with a list of possible choices! then people can comment their choice. what i will do is see what option gets voted the most in the span of a few days/maybe a week, then alter the story according to what people pick. this was supposed to be posted on halloween, but i never did (sorry hayley) but i've tweaked it to account for each possible ending. hope this is kind of fun :) please make a choice for me! you can even write in your own suggestions if you are not satisfied with the options! i'll take them into account. thanks!

He smells Jaebum before he sees him.

The smell, as always, is complex and layered, a mix of weed and smoke and cats all covered by sloppy sprays of air fresheners and a brand of cheap cologne he’s used since middle school. He knows because he’d helped Jaebum pick it out when they were eleven and had sneaked away from Jinyoung’s house to raid the mall in search of it. The venture took hours, endless amount of sprays and sniffs that left them dizzy — dizzy from the fumes, dizzy from the laughter, dizzy from their sheer youth.

They settled on two brands, though they could only afford the cheaper one with the money Jinyoung had saved up and the cash Jaebum had taken from his dad’s wallet. Still, they bubbled with energy, so ready to grow up, to be impressive even if they had no one to impress. And even though he couldn’t afford the one he had wanted, a bottle still showed up in his room, unexplained and never mentioned between them, not at first. At eleven, Jinyoung was sure it was magic — his want so strong that it had materialized a bottle — but later he put the clues together, confronted Jaebum and made him return it to the store.

That had been before Jaebum’s parents went through their divorce, before his dad moved out, before Jaebum’s interests strayed from reading with Jinyoung to music, to parties, to different friends that took up his time and made a stranger out of him. Even the familiar smells that had defined Jaebum — strawberry-scented lotion and sunburnt hair — had rotted to the stench of liquor, cigarettes, other smells Jinyoung could never pinpoint.

And now, led by his nose, he finds Jaebum, wonders if the smell of weed is recent or he’d forgotten to do his laundry. He spots the jeans first, baggy as ever, and follows its lines up to the bottom of an oversized shirt. The rest of Jaebum disappears behind a red locker door. Jinyoung approaches and knocks his knuckles against the door, closes it with a push of his finger; it clicks closed and reveals Jaebum holding one of his eyes open with a finger, his eyeball red and white and framed in flesh so pink that Jinyoung winces. Jaebum only glances his way for a second before he goes back to putting on eye drops. His earrings sway a little, his ears disappearing into a black beanie.

“You shouldn’t be doing drugs before school,” Jinyoung says, tries to sound uninterested.

“You can’t prove it,” Jaebum responds, wets his eyes and blinks a few times before he finally faces Jinyoung again.

“Well, maybe I could,” Jinyoung says but he’s in no mood to argue. He needs something from Jaebum, the same thing he’s needed all these years during high school. “I need a ride tomorrow, can you give me one?”

Jaebum’s head tilts — he looks lost, more than usual. Then he nods, slowly. “Sure. What day is tomorrow?”

“Friday. I need a ride home from the mathlete competition.”

“You still do that?”

“Of course I do,” Jinyoung says, annoyed now. He rolls his eyes, sighs to get his point across, “So, can you do it?”

Jaebum, again, nods, this time just once. He looks at Jinyoung, not focused or unfocused, rather mindful, watching, observant. Then he smiles, wide enough that his dry lips almost crack.

“Remember when we were in math together — during that test — with that teacher — with those problems you couldn’t figure out so you started crying in the middle of that test and I had to finish it for you and —” Jaebum starts to laugh before he finishes, large sounds that fill his throat, that chime in the air like bells. He seems set on finishing the story, though, because he holds his chest, tries not to bend over as if laughter were water and he were just emptying himself. As if it is lodged in his throat, a dam waiting to burst with the rest of his story but Jinyoung, already embarrassed, rushes down the hallway before Jaebum can finish.

*

Jinyoung’s friends know _of_ Jaebum, and Jaebum knows _of_ Jinyoung’s friends, and between them is a very wide gap of _knowing_ , but that never stops Jaebum from sitting next to Jinyoung at their table during lunch. Bambam and Youngjae, the other two mathletes, sit the farthest away from Jaebum, always welcome him with quick, wary glances. They never exchange a word, not even by accident, and only Wonpil and Jae, the captain and co-captain of the school’s debate team, ever greet him, though they rarely stray from formalities. Jaebum sits next to Jinyoung, silently eating his food, staring into space, sometimes pinning a random sentence to the group’s conversation, mostly throwing in unnecessary comments. And when Jaebum is done with his food, he moves on to eating Jinyoung’s until he has nothing else to eat — then he simply puts his head down into his arms, takes a nap until lunch ends.

He used to question this arrangement at first, wondered what Jaebum thought, why he chose lunch with Jinyoung to be the only stable interaction in the ruins of their friendship — inside and outside of school. Because Jaebum knew people, more than anyone else at the table combined: people nodded at him, waved, patted his back as they passed him, sometimes threw a joke his way. It only became clear when Jaebum’s birthday came around and Jinyoung was the only one who even knew, the only one to get him a card from what he could see. Jaebum knew people, yes, but their relationship ended there. Jaebum had no friends.

So when Jae pulled him aside, then Youngjae, and told him to get rid of his stoner friend, that they were uncomfortable around him, Jinyoung had stood his ground.

“You guys can co-exist,” he’d said, “He doesn’t bother anyone.”

Like usual Jinyoung arrives first, settles down on the table with the lunch he’d packed (or, rather, sorted from what his mother made him, made sure to take out the daily note she wrote to him from a notepad with inspirational quotes — today’s had been: What you seek is seeking you) and awaits the arrivals. Bambam is always first, nodding, bowing his head, claiming the corner on the other side. Then comes Jae, then Youngjae, then Jaebum clatters into the space at his right. Last, as always, is Wonpil, the boy with short arms, with short legs, with a black sweater with lint along its arm. Wonpil with the steady smile, with the thick glasses. Wonpil, the boy that had, somehow, burrowed his way into the back of Jinyoung’s mind so that every thought, no matter how remote, how singular, could always lead back to Wonpil.

Jinyoung’s crush isn’t based on attraction, no. Jinyoung had gym class with Wonpil so he knew there wasn’t much muscle on Wonpil, or much mass at all, and his hair was cropped short, and without glasses he was blind — perfect target practice during dodgeball. He wasn’t anything like the men from the Harlequin romances Jinyoung used to sneak, and still sneaks, from his mother’s room into his own to read, shamefully, with a flashlight at night while he rubs one out. He has no fantasies of Wonpil ripping open his overshirt, then his sweater, then the buttons of the shirt under, then the undershirt under that, to reveal his skinny torso before picking up Jinyoung in his arms, taking him to a car and driving off.

His fantasies, instead, revolve around domestic life with Wonpil: surely, in the future, he would be an intellectual of some kind, with a mortgage, a retirement plan, a study filled with books, and of course he’d wear his characteristic sweater and on the mornings of important meetings he would ask Jinyoung, “does this outfit look okay?” and Jinyoung, who has a backpack in most of his fantasies, would reach into the outer pocket, take out his lint roller — he always carried one, just in case — and roll away the lint. Then Wonpil would thank him and smile and Jinyoung would remember the day he’d fallen in love, not in gym class, or in the hallway, or seeing him play any kind of sport, but instead in freshman English class when the teacher had misquoted an author and Wonpil, tiny and polite, raised his hand and corrected him. It was this action that had charmed him: the steadiness in his voice, in his posture, how all his bones seemed to settle into order every single time. Like the universe itself were proving its exactitude in the body of frail little teenage boy who sat in his seat and smiled at having been right.  

And when he finally arrives at their lunchtable, says hello to everyone, sits neatly next to on the other side of Jinyoung, it is the same things about Wonpil that most charm him; his posture is always tight and regimented and identical to how it’s always been — Jinyoung would know. He doesn’t demand more space than he needs to, doesn’t open his legs too wide, keeps them prim, proper.

Jinyoung, for a long time, stares at his food, neither hungry nor satiated, simply debating in his head whether it would be better to have a dog or a cat while him and Wonpil were away for college, because a cat would mean more lint everywhere but the dog would surely need more attention, and depending on their workload and if Wonpil got a job and —

“Hey, Jinyoung, do you need a ride home after the competition?”

The words rattle into his ear, pick apart his fantasy, turn his head in the direction of the voice. Wonpil spoke to him, and at first his words don’t make sense — they can’t make sense. They were friends, yes, but they never spent time alone together, much less in a car, much less at night and going home. He opens his mouth to say yes, to welcome this new future — maybe what he was seeking had been seeking him, too — but he remembers his mother, her rules. Wonpil had never met her, so Wonpil could never drive him home, not now, at least.

“I — well, I have a ride home that day. But thank you for offering —” He means to say more, but he cuts himself off, sure he’ll cry if he continues. Maybe he can talk to his mother, maybe he could arrange a meeting between her and Wonpil somehow, something casual and light that could establish years worth of trust between them. And just as he’s zeroing in on a plan, Wonpil speaks again.

“Well, maybe we can go out for a milkshake some time, celebrate your win.”

Again, Jinyoung is almost floored, almost breathless. He makes it a point to look at his food only, separating the two triangle halves of his sandwich. This is cool, he thinks, this is playing hard to get. Make him wait a second before he gets a response, let him think about what he’s missing. But his strategy backfires — he never gets a chance to respond, Jaebum does for him.

“He can’t drink milkshakes, he’s lactose intolerant.”

Jinyoung’s lips part; his mouth hangs open. This time he _is_ breathless but for all the wrong reasons. Confusion turns to anger turns to shock turns to embarrassment turns to a simple emptiness that keeps him quiet until Wonpil responds.

“Well, maybe not a milkshake, maybe we can go to a park or something — there’s one with a lake close to my —”

Again, Jaebum responds, this time in between bites of food, his mouth full, “Jinyoung doesn’t like nature. He hates ducks.”

“Um, that’s okay. My friend’s band is playing next Tuesday —”

“Jinyoung’s mom doesn’t let him stay out late on school nights.” Jinyoung is red at this point, speechless, hoping not for romance of any kind, not for happiness, not for anything that might seek him but he wishes for a black hole to rip apart the air in front of him and take him away from here and just as he’s about to close his eyes to make the world disappear, Jaebum continues. “He likes movies. Sunday matinee. He wants to see the Fifth Element, comes out in a month.”

“I want to see it, too, that’s perfect! We can go together, I’ll take you.”

What’s missing is “it’s a date” but he can’t be picky, not now when he doesn’t know who to thank, so he thanks his mother for making the most ornate ham and tomato sandwich that he can stare at, holding back tears — both from nerves and joy. He takes a breath, takes another, looks up at Wonpil and he’s _smiling_ , not just smiling but at him, Jinyoung, the boy who’s been adoring him from afar. His stomach fills with flutters of all kinds, feels like there’s butterflies in him, each trying to get out, each tickling every part of him so that he wants to laugh out loud at his good fortune. And he has Jaebum to thank, but when he turns, Jaebum is gone with the sandwich his mother made.

“We can set up a date after your competition,” Wonpil says, brings Jinyoung’s attention back to the present.

“Yes,” he says, almost wishing the universe would still tear a hole into space to take him a few weeks into the future, “The competition.”

*

That Friday they win the competition, not because their skills are on par or superior, or because they’d been faster, better, smarter, but because the other team got caught with calculators sewn into their already suspiciously oversized blazers. This default victory, though, is enough to send Bambam, Youngjae, Nayeon, and Jinyoung into an elevated bliss. They’re so ecstatic, in fact, that they decide to compete after all, not with the other team but among themselves — Nayeon and Jinyoung, Bambam and Youngjae, four talented mathletes in matching green polos. They figure this is what the two people in the audience deserve, at least: an honest, thrilling math competition.

And then that bliss settles and it feels like this is what the rest of their lives will be like; they can’t wipe away their smiles, they can’t shake off the joy, the lightness. They seem to float around on stage when it’s done, so gracefully it might be a choreographed dance. Then the team breaks up, bit by bit, whisked away into what  seems like a warm, dazzling night. The stars aren’t out but Jinyoung feels them there, pulsing just for him, for them, for the victory they’ve earned.

Nayeon disappears with her boyfriend, Bambam and Youngjae drive home together for a weekend of, well, whatever it is that Bambam and Youngjae did on their spare time, and Jinyoung steps into the parking lot, heads straight to Jaebum’s car.

It isn’t hard to find since it’s one of the only cars left, the red Saab convertible with a clean exterior, with the windows cracked open just a tiny sliver so that the trot music comes out in a quiet, consistent thump. Immediately, just hearing a few notes, Jinyoung’s mood plummets. The closer he gets, the stronger the distinct smell of weed climbs up his nose and by the time he’s climbing into the passenger seat and slamming the door shut, he’s had enough of it — the music, the smell, Jaebum in the front seat looking up, not surprised or shocked but happy.

“How’d it go?” he asks but Jinyoung is fighting the urge to open the door and leave and walk all the way home so he just looks down at his lap, shrugs.

“It went okay. We won.”

And then Jaebum pats Jinyoung’s shoulder, starts congratulating him but Jinyoung cuts him off.

“Can we go?” he asks, quiet so it doesn’t sound snobby, ungrateful, because he knows what he’s being. He knows he’s being rude to his oldest friend but he can’t get the alternative out of his head: Wonpil driving him home, Wonpil celebrating with him, Wonpil playing music that isn’t the awful trot mixtape that Jaebum has listened to for years. He would bet that Wonpil’s car wouldn’t smell like weed, or that he would have started to drive when Jinyoung asked him to go instead of rustling his arm around the tiny backseat, then at his feet, then in front of Jinyoung in the glove compartment.

Annoyed, Jinyoung rolls his eyes, sighs loudly, leans against the door.

“What are you looking for?”

“I lost my stash,” Jaebum says, and only now does Jinyoung notice how quiet his voice is, not the usual recklessness, or distraction, but small. He sounds childish, like the eleven year old he used to know, almost. It warms Jinyoung unexpectedly, catches him off guard, but it’s only a flicker. Jinyoung swallows the lump in his throat, the small tangle of empathy and concern. Just as quickly as time had sped back, it jumps forward — they are not eleven anymore, they are eighteen and grown and impatient.

“You can get more tomorrow, I’m sure. Can we please go?”

“I need it tonight, I —”

Jaebum goes silent, keeps looking, and Jinyoung rolls his eyes.

“Are you addicted?”

Jaebum pauses his search, then continues, this time turning his entire body to search in the back so his sweatshirt rides up and hugs his middle.

“You can’t get addicted,” he says in between grunts, “I just need it to sleep.”

“Well, I need to sleep. I have to study tomorrow,” Jinyoung says, firmer this time. He taps the dashboard and that’s when Jaebum sits back into his seat correctly. He looks at Jinyoung, looks at the wheel.

“I’m serious,” Jinyoung continues, “I need to get home. Curfew, remember?”

Jaebum nods, looks tiny as he pats the pockets of his jeans one more time then slumps, looks especially sad surrounded by the insistent trot music. But Jinyoung does not care, not tonight, not when he’s been pushed into this universe where he didn’t get to ride home with his crush, though he still hopes for it somehow. As if he looks away and looks back it’ll be Wonpil driving the car. This is what he thinks about when Jaebum turns the key in the ignition and backs out of the parking spot, gets on the road. He thinks of all the ways the night could be improved — it had so much potential. Why did these things have to happen to him, he wonders. He never does much wrong, and whatever he does is offset by his good deeds. He volunteers, he donates money, tells his mom he loves her. He sighs again and tries to ignore the smell, the music, the boy driving the car in hopes that the night can be saved.

Then they near a light and the car slows to a stop. A crowd of people cross the street, each more strange than the one befoe. One girl has blue hair, the boy she’s with has pink. Then another girl walks behind them with green hair, parts of her head shaved. Each one has a uniform of denim and patches and leather and what look like piercings glinting from their ears, some their nose, some their lips, and a few eyebrows. One boy’s hair is spiky and hard and another boy has tattoos crowding his cheek and Jinyoung wonders if this is a sign from God that he’s in the lesser universe, a hellish one, grotesque and full of these ghouls. He wants nothing more than to be gone, again. He wants to be home.

He closes his eyes, waits for everyone to pass but he hears the driver’s side window roll down and almost feels the trot music spill out, like water.

“Hey!” Jaebum calls out and Jinyoung’s eyes tear open. He isn’t sure of where to look: at Jaebum who’s gone insane or the small crowd that stops at the sound of his voice.

“What the fuck are you listening to?!” one boy shouts back, but Jaebum ignores him.

“Where are you guys going?”

Most of the crowd keeps walking, one guy flips him off, as does the girl with pink hair. Only one responds, “A concert. Down at the Warby Hall. A few bands are playing.”

Jaebum nods, rolls up the window, and when the lights flash into green, he turns the wrong way.

“Hey, this isn’t the way to my house,” Jinyoung says, sitting up in his seat, suddenly aware of his surroundings: dimly lit streets, broken up roads, holes full of dirt. There are no trees in sight, or homes, just gray cement buildings — everything industrial and unfriendly and terrifying to the rising panic in his stomach, his throat. It feels like bile, bubbling from within, burning with every possibility of how everything could go wrong.

“I know,” Jaebum says and Jinyoung’s stomach sinks. Everything sinks — his breath, his heart, everything pools together at the pit of his stomach and he realizes he might cry. This isn’t a wrong turn, this isn’t a mistake; Jaebum, for some reason or another, is taking him into a darker part of town that looks unfamiliar and dangerous. The streets are narrow after two blocks and crowds of shady people seems to materialize out of nowhere, a few on each corner, some shrouded in the dark and others proudly in the open, under street lights, watching the car roll through.

“Jaebum, where are we going?”

“You heard them — concert — they have to be selling shit there,” Jaebum responds, almost calmly.

“No, Jaebum. We’re going home. You’re taking me home — if you think I’m going to let you drive to — stop! Don’t go this way, Jaebum!”

Jaebum, as if in a trance, drives straight to a large building with a crowd lingering outside. They look like ants, some leaving, some entering, others spinning in circles outside. Jaebum doesn’t seem to be satisfied with just scaring Jinyoung, he seems set on killing him of fright because he doesn’t park at a distance, or across the street, but he drives into the lot in front and waits for the crowd to disperse enough that he can inch the car further and further and then he stops. People smack his car with their fist and some climb across the hood, but no one pays attention or turns to look at the boy that jumps at each loud noise, at the boy ready to cry and rage and climb into the backseat and hide.

“Jaebum, please get out of here — Jaebum, don’t go inside, don’t leave me here — Jaebum! Jaebum!”

“It’ll just be a second, I promise. Five minutes, and if I don’t find anyone, I’ll be back. I promise,” Jaebum says, his voice soft, gentle, like it used to be, like it usually is behind the haze of drugs and alcohol and then Jaebum reaches over to touch Jinyoung’s hand but he pulls it away. Jaebum looks more shocked than hurt, but then he reverts back to that sad look in his eye; as if this isn’t what he wants, either; as if he’s being controlled, possessed; as if he wants nothing more than to drive Jinyoung home.

“I promise,” he says and turns off the car but the leaves the key inside. Then he opens the door, gives Jinyoung one last look, apologetic this time, and closes the door.

And that’s how Jinyoung dies: suffocated in a car, alone, the windows down, too afraid to go outside where the town’s freaks have gathered around to steal the air and space. To make sure he doesn’t get down from the car. To make sure a red convertible Saab from 1989 is his tomb. At least, he feels like he’s died, somehow, because what comes after Jaebum leaves isn’t fear but anger. He looks at the empty driver’s seat, still in shock, and he looks around the parking lot. The crowd has thinned out, and to replace their chatter comes music — brash and heavy and loud. The building looks old but sturdy, like a warehouse from another time and the lights across its front are white, bright, sometimes flicker but mostly just illuminate the demons gathered up front near a payphone. He swears some of them have horns, but the anger warming him makes the vision blurry.

His mind is dominated by a single thought: Wonpil would have _never_ done this to him.

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, counts to ten, to twenty, then to thirty. Jaebum isn’t back, but Jinyoung’s mind starts to focus, so sharp that it startles him. Why should he wait, he thinks, for someone who doesn’t think about him. Let him worry, let him search. Jinyoung looks around on the floor with his fingers and finds some change among the cigarette butts and two cans and something glass he can’t quite place. Then he repeats his breathing techniques, counts to thirty again, and when Jaebum still hasn’t returned, he takes his destiny into his own hands. He pulls on the handle, swings the door open, hits a guy bent down tying the laces on his boots. The guy falls back and Jinyoung almost screams. When he goes to check on him, though, the man is laughing, bleeding from the nose and laughing and it sends a chill down Jinyoung’s spine. He slams the door shut, almost runs to the payphone.

He tries to focus on the things he knows: the keypad on the payphone, the change in his hand, the possibility of who to call. There’s only a few people he trusts enough to call at such a late hour on a Friday asking for a ride, one less after tonight. He rakes his memories for a few numbers, which isn’t hard — he uses them to test out studying methods. With a sigh, he pushes the change in, picks up the receiver, rubs his arm then starts to dial…

* * *

 

CHOICES

**A:** BAMBAM AND YOUNGJAE  
**B:** HIS MOTHER  
**C:** WONPIL  
**D:** NAYEON


	2. disappear .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mom won last round. am i supposed to say what the other choices would have caused? or does that take the fun out of it?

His mother picks up after the second ring. 

“Hello?”  

“Mom?” his voice almost cracks. The sound of his mother’s voice — his sweet, sweet mother — is enough to make him feel safer, even over the phone. “Can you come pick me up?” 

A moment of silence passes between them, then she clears her throat. In the background he hears a man’s voice, quiet, as if mumbling, and then the hiss of his mother’s shush. Jinyoung rolls his eyes, fights the groan that gathers at the base of his throat. His mother’s “busy work-night” had been another date with the neighbor.

“Of course, sweetie, where are you at?” 

The question brings him back to the present, forces him to look around him. People have stopped filing into the venue and it seems like everyone who’s going to be inside is already inside; the outside is littered with stray people, though, smoking in clumps and drinking and on the far sidewalk someone is bent over, puking, with a friend patting their back. He imagines her mother driving here, slow as always; he imagines her asking him why he was there and what had happened — how could he explain it? Jaebum deserved her fury, of course, but there would be blame to share, and he would be grounded just as well. He sighs, shakes his head, closes his eyes.

“Same place as always,” he lies. 

“Okay, I’ll be there in a second. I just need to put some things in order.”

Jinyoung hears the voice in the background again and his mother’s giggle before the line cuts off. The dial tone blares in his ear. 

He hangs up the phone, looks around one more time, curses Jaebum and drugs and punk rock concerts and his inability to drive and Wonpil, too, for not feeling in his bones that something was amiss, for not attending the competition, for simply not being there. It takes a few seconds to shake off the anger, the disappointment, and Jinyoung, still disillusioned, starts to sprint. 

Walking is reasonable, especially since his mother drives slow, her seat pushed up all the way to the front, her foot barely hitting the pedals; jogging is safe, it gives him enough time to arrive, catch his breath, pretend as if he’d been there, outside the mathlete competition, the entire time; sprinting, though, comes with the added bonus of leaving this little pocket of hell behind, complete with Jaebum and his red car and the one girl near the entrance that keeps staring at him. 

So he sprints, as much as someone like him can: he’d walked every single mile in gym class, sometimes he pretended to be sick in order to sit out, sometimes he would simply not attend. But now he feels electrified and focuses on the clear vision of the old building that used to be a theatre and now houses small to mid-sized school extracurricular events, he pictures the bricks, the creaking doors, the missing tile by the bathroom that will probably never be repaired. He focuses so intently that his surroundings melt away. There is no concert, there are no people attending, there is no red car, no Jaebum, there is only a warm night rushing around him as he runs, his forehead bared, the wind in his hair. 

But when he turns on the next street, he crashes into another body. Jinyoung stumbles backward and falls on his bottom just as the squealing starts. He thinks it’s his own voice, wailing — how long had he been doing that? — but then his gaze falls to the pig on his back crying out for help. 

“What the fuck — fuck —”

The other boy, hair cropped close to his head, face twisted in anger as he manages to stand, keeps cursing at Jinyoung and the animal keeps squealing and the other three people holding the pig up by its legs start to curse, too, so Jinyoung jumps to his feet and shouts an apology and keeps sprinting, this time faster and faster until his lungs ache with each breath and his heart is punching against his ribs.

Once he’s far enough that the pig’s screech is nothing but an echo in his ears, he slows down, slumps against a wall and gulps in the air. Only then does he realize he’s crying, though he isn’t sure why, or why his hands tremble, but he figures the pig has something to do with it — every time he closes his eyes he sees the face. All mangled and pink and scared and desperate to shake loose the hold on its legs, to run just like Jinyoung had, to be free to do whatever pigs did in the city. Then he thinks of the only other pig he’d ever seen when he was six and Jaebum was seven and Jinyoung had cried because pigs terrified him and Jaebum had stood between the pig and him and protected him, yelling at the pig with an impressive amount of anger for a seven year old, telling the pig to leave Jinyoung alone, that it was a bully and not cute, no matter how much mud it rolled around in or how many spiders it managed to save.

It’s this that breaks him, the realization that nothing is innocent anymore and those days with Jaebum are gone; that he can’t just sit and read without worrying about the next day, or the day after that, and he slumps further down until he’s sitting on the sidewalk, still crying. Maybe he should be nicer to Jaebum, he thinks, or more firm with himself, or more sure of who he his and who he isn’t — he’s close to having another breakdown but he can only handle one per night. So, despite the way his hands tremble or how weak his legs are — already sore — or the pain in his right knee, he stands up. 

He wipes his eyes, looks up to see where he is, and resumes his path. He jogs from time to time, but mostly he walks fast, his hands balling into loose fists, his arms bent, his hips swiveling to give him that extra speed. He’d seen fast-walkers before at the park and he mimics them now, makes it to the front of the building with some time to spare.

His mother arrives just a few minutes later, not in her car but in the neighbor’s. Jinyoung isn’t disappointed or embarrassed anymore — he’s too tired. Instead he climbs into the car in silence, settles into his seat and buckles the seatbelt without a word.

“How’d it go?” his mother asks, smiling.

“We won,” he answers, closes his eyes, presses his head against the window.

“That’s wonderful — Charles, isn’t that wonderful?” 

“It is,” Charles responds with matching enthusiasm, “You’ve got a brain on you, kid.”

Jinyoung grunts, then his mom asks, “Wasn’t Jaebum supposed to pick you up?” 

His mouth goes dry for a second, words failing to materialize. He keeps his eyes closed, though, when he says, “I guess he forgot.” 

“That’s not like him,” she answers with genuine concern, “Make sure you call him in the morning, see if he’s okay.” 

“I will,” Jinyoung answers, knows he won’t. Knows that for the past six years he’s answered “fine” every time his mother asks how Jaebum is doing, and that all she knows of him is that he picks him up and drops him off, sometimes late, but he never forgets. 

“Well,” she continues, “It’s a good thing Charles was out — he was just outside his house, offered a ride. You know how much trouble I have seeing at night, I would have got here in the morning if it wasn’t for him.” 

“You should never let a lady drive herself if you can help it, kid. Remember that,” Charles chimes in and Jinyoung almost groans but he’s closer to sleep than being awake, exhausted from all the mental exertion, from the running, from this infinite little night. He falls asleep for a minute before his mother gasps.

“What is that?” she asks and Jinyoung, startled, peers out through the window. In the distance, something’s on fire; it looks big, like an entire building; the flames light up the smoke gathering above it, like clouds. Only when they keep driving does Jinyoung notice it’s in the direction of the venue. He thinks of the pig, thinks of Jaebum, and hopes both of them are okay. 

— 

By the time he gets into his pajamas — fleece bottoms with a Batman print and an old Nintendo shirt — Jinyoung feels like he’s sleepwalking. His body is sluggish, a bit cold, and his thoughts switch between dreams and reality. He brushes his teeth with a yawn, drags his feet along the wood flooring to his room. Slides into bed, under the blankets, sets his alarm then turns around, yawns again, curls up. The moon and the streetlamp near their house lights up his room through the window in gentle shades. Jinyoung hums, turns to his other side and Jaebum is there, facing him.

His eyes are wide, desperate; the light from outside reveals a few gashes on his forehead, one still bleeding slowly, oozing out blood; his ears are torn, as if someone pulled out his earrings; part of his cheeks looks burnt; his chin and lips are stained, as if he’d been drinking something dark and Jinyoung’s immediate thought is blood — his scream gets caught in his throat. 

“Why did you leave?” Jaebum whispers, gasping, “Why did you leave? I didn’t see you in the car — I went back inside to look for you — why did you leave? I promised, Jinyoung.” 

Jaebum’s words sound like steam rising in angry spurts and as he talks, Jinyoung notices that each cut is slowly closing; his torn earlobes stick together, start to fuse. Slowly, the gashes heal into bulging scars: a thick cross above his right eyebrow.

“Why do you hate me? What did I do?”

Slowly, his body wakes up and Jinyoung, still trying to scream, still trying to make sense of Jaebum who mirrors each of his movements by trying to scream, too, fumbles backwards and falls off his bed and hits his head against the dresser. The world goes dark. 

—

He wakes up on the floor with a headache and a dry mouth and the sensation of being watched. He can still see Jaebum when he closes his eyes, but the vision starts to fade with each spot that he checks: the windows are closed, the bottom of his bed has some dirtied underwear from his self-exploration time but nothing else, there is no one in his closet or in the bathroom — nothing. It must have been a bad dream, he thinks, and with that shallow sense of safety he goes downstairs on sore legs.

His mother is in the kitchen, breakfast already made. Jinyoung’s stomach growls, his tongue feels parched; even half-scared to death, somehow his body manages to continue unaffected. There is the risk of death, yes, but there is hunger, there is thirst. He greets his mother, sits down to eat, and the day unfolds as usual. 

It isn’t until noon that his mother calls him into the living room.

“Look,” she says, points to the TV where the ruins of the venue from last night flash on the screen. They show a few pictures of it on fire, too, and Jinyoung gets nervous again. After a minute, his mother says, “Please, honey, call Jaebum, make sure he’s okay. A lot of people got hurt — better to be safe than sorry.” 

And so Jinyoung finds himself upstairs in his room dialing Jaebum’s house, his heart beating from the fear; but the fear is too mixed, tugs him in different directions. He doesn’t know what’s more terrifying: Jaebum having died in that fire or Jaebum having survived it. Each thought is paired with the images of his nightmare last night, of Jaebum undead, gasping still. 

The phone rings and rings and rings until Jinyoung hears a click, then breathing. 

“H-hello?” Jinyoung stutters.

“Oh, Jinyoung? Is that you?” Jaebum’s mom sounds happy to hear his voice, and for a second the fear leaves Jinyoung. How long had it been since they’d spoken? And still, despite the years, she sounds warm, which leaves him cold with guilt.

“Ah — yeah, it’s me. Hi, Mrs. Im, good afternoon. Is Jaebum around by any chance?” 

“Let me check, I just walked in the door. I was supposed to be off work last night but with that fire the hospital was so busy — did you see it? The kids kept coming into the ER and I was so scared I would see Jaebum like that, but then I remembered you and him were together — oh, I felt so relieved but so guilty.” 

Jinyoung can hear her set down her keys and start walking down the hall, her shoes making tiny squeaks in the ground. As for her words, he can’t seem to respond; his voice, again, feels stuck, and this time there’s no pulling it out. He sits there, on his bed, mouth agape, his breaths short and shallow. 

“He’s unpredictable but I feel so much better knowing he’s with you. How was it? What will this be? Your fourth competition this year? And you’ve won all of them, your mother must be so proud,” she pauses, then Jinyoung hears her try to turn a doorknob; it rattles — locked from the inside, “Jaebum tells me you’re going to try robotics, too. He says you have a good shot since you’re studying engineering on your own, so ambitious. I’m sure you’ll do great, you always were when you were a boy — it’s been so long, Jinyoung.” 

She knocks a door, tries the knob again, and then another sound slips in through the phone: running water — a shower. 

“He’s in the bathroom, sweetie. I’ll tell him to call you back when he’s done, alright?” 

“No — no, that’s okay. I’ll call back later.” 

“Okay, Jinyoung. I have to go get some rest now, I’m due back at the hospital in ten hours. It was so nice to hear from you, I hope you can come around soon. I miss hearing you boys laugh and joke all the time — do you remember? I used to walk by and you boys were silent, and as soon as I was gone there you were, laughing.” 

Jinyoung can hear the smile in her voice, the openness Jaebum inherited. 

“I’ll try, Mrs. Im,” he says, then surprises himself when he says, “I miss that, too. It was nice talking to you.” 

She hums, then says, “I guess we never really know what we have until it’s gone, huh? Life is so funny — anyway, loved hearing from you. Bye-bye!” 

After a click, her voice is gone, as is the presence she radiates, even over the phone. Life gets split into two sides: what he knows, which is Jaebum is alive and well, but not forgiven; and what he doesn’t know, which leaves him a roomful of questions about his dream, about the fire, about this uneasiness that won’t go away.

—

By Monday, the uneasiness remains, though less potent as before. It lingers under the skin of everything else. After all, there are more important things like turning in homework, studying for exams, meeting with teachers, eating lunch with crush and friends. Yet, when Jinyoung goes to their table late, only Youngjae and Bambam are there, talking in hushed whispers. No Jaebum in sight, or Wonpil, or Jae.

“Where is everyone?” 

“Debate team meeting,” Bambam says, then looks where Jaebum usually sits and shrugs, “I haven’t seen him all day.” 

“Truancy,” Youngjae says, rolling his eyes, but then leans forward across the table.

“Did you hear?” 

“Hear what? About the fire?” Jinyoung answers, starts to pick at his food; his appetite, like Wonpil, is nowhere to be seen.

“No — the  _ murders _ .” 

“What murders are you talking about?”

“Okay, so, Bambam’s uncle’s best friend’s sister is a cop, and she told her brother, who told Bambam’s uncle, who then told Bambam’s mom while we were sorting our Magic: The Gathering cards in the kitchen about some bodies they found at the edge of town.” 

Youngjae seems serious, with set eyes, a stern look — beside him Bambam is nodding slowly.

“And? What about it?”

Now Youngjae looks offended, sits back and crosses his arms. 

“What do you mean  _ what  _ about it? Murders? Bodies? On the same night as the fire? Something sketchy is going on.” 

Bambam continues, “My uncle said that the bodies they found were cut up, too. Cuts on their forehead, burn marks over their body — it looked like they were tortured.”

Jinyoung’s blood goes cold. The sandwich he’d been pulling out of the bag falls out of his grasp, and with it the inspirational note he’d been too distracted to take out (today’s is: “If you are not willing to risk the usual you will have to settle for the ordinary”). He reads it distractedly, slips it back in the bag with the rest of his food except for the single asparagus wrapped in foil.

“Are you sure —  _ positive  _ this is what your uncle’s friend said?” 

Youngjae leans forward, excited again, “Uncle’s best friend’s  _ sister  _ — but yes, can you believe it? It’s like out of a horror movie.” 

Jinyoung chews on the asparagus and closes his eyes. He decides there are two options: either he is settling into a new set of psychic abilities, which could explain the vision of Jaebum with the cuts on his forehead, and since he is  _ just  _ starting to develop them, would explain why it was Jaebum at all and not the dead strangers; the second option is that Jaebum is a corpse, reanimated by  _ something.  _ Maybe he’d always been dead — maybe Jinyoung’s been in a coma since he was twelve and Jaebum is a coping mechanism his mind created to get through the days, to not get bored. Maybe. 

He excuses himself early and throws away his lunch along with the note, then floats by the rest of the day, barely paying attention in class, mostly concentrating, quietly in the corner, on having another vision. After math and physics end without another message from the dead, he decides to find Jaebum after school, set on inspecting his forehead. 

The bell rings and he rushes through the halls, dodges a cheerleader, a kid from drama, that girl from third period that chews gum too loud, the boy who gave the gun to her, and finally, like an oasis in a desert, the parking lot appears. Jinyoung, who holds a textbook to his chest — the heaviest one — in case Jaebum  _ is  _ undead and tries to infect him, heads straight to the corner. Jaebum might be unpredictable in most things, but he always parks in the same spot, by the tree, just far enough that the smell of weed doesn’t warn any of the teachers. And like clockwork the Saab is there, parked carefully in its spot. He is relieved since, according to the theories he’s written and read and peer reviewed with Bambam and Youngjae, the undead don’t know routines, they don’t know order. They would never park in the usual spot, so neatly either.

He reaches the car and pulls the passenger door open.

“Jaebum!” he’s excited to see him: the brown shirt flung across his head, the sight of skin, tan and very alive-looking, the jeans and boxers pulled down around his calves, the letterman jacket across his lap — Jinyoung steps back when the head pokes through the shirt and it isn’t Jaebum’s face that looks at him, but Jackson’s. They stare at each other for a second until Jackson snickers and starts to pull his underwear up which makes the jacket fall and Jinyoung lifts his textbook over his face, not to protect himself from a zombie bite, or an undead maul, or even a regular punch, but to protect himself from seeing the school’s varsity quarterback’s famed dick. 

“Can I help you?” Jackson says, but Jinyoung just says no and kicks the door closed. He hears Jackson groan when the door hits his shin, but Jinyoung is back in school by the time he thinks to make sure he’s okay. He rushes to the other side of campus and never looks back. 

—

He doesn’t see Jaebum again for a week. After catching Jackson nude in his car, Jinyoung tries not to think about him too much. Though sometimes, when the equations on the board are too simple, or his English class falls two weeks behind the syllabus, he finds himself wondering. What would Jackson be doing with Jaebum? What did they have in common? Why was he naked? 

Somehow, by the time he goes to lunch that Monday, he’s settled on one thing: Jackson and Jaebum are carpooling and Jackson was changing before practice. He likes this idea, the clean lines, the sturdy logic; like a patch of firm dirt ready for a house to be built on it. Jinyoung is smiling to himself when he sits down, so pleased that he doesn’t even get sad when Wonpil and Jae don’t show up, still busy with the debate team. Jaebum still hasn’t shown up to lunch, but that doesn’t bother him, either. He must be busy figuring out new carpool routes, planning with Jackson. 

Bambam and Youngjae are excited to see him, though.

This time it’s Bambam that leans forward and whispers, loudly, “Did you hear?” 

“You know, every single time you’ve asked me that, I haven’t — that’s so  _ vague _ . I’ve heard a lot of things, you have to be specific.”

Bambam and Youngjae share a look of concern, too involved in the dramatics of sharing secrets to take Jinyoung’s grievance into account. Then Bambam continues, “The  _ murder _ .” 

After a week of not feeling fear, it returns again, like a chilly breeze; his armpits start to sweat — he’ll have to put more deodorant on in the bathroom. 

“No, what murder?” 

“The thing is — you know — it’s not  _ technically  _ a murder, but he is gone. I’m calling it right now — murder!”

Youngjae is nodding and Bambam joins him and Jinyoung pulls out today’s sandwich — cucumber and roast beef — and, again, the note falls out and he goes to read it, and as he does, he asks, “Who? Who is getting killed?” 

And the note, in messy writing, written over and over again maniacally in red ink, reads: “You.” 

His spine goes cold. If he’d been eating, he would have choked there, possibly died, most likely would have cried but he drops the note and it flips to the other side. In cleaner writing is the full quote in blue: “You are confined only by the walls you build yourself.” No death threat, no premonition, just his mother’s pen running out of ink. 

But relief doesn’t last long, a beat later Youngjae says, “Jackson. He’s been missing for a few days. There’s a lot of theories but no one can find him — not even his parents.” 

Silence surrounds them, thickens the air, makes it hard to breathe so Jinyoung swallows the lump in his throat. The lump of both fear and worry, the lump of all the words he keeps quiet, the lump of sobs that taste of venues on fire and a sweet-smelling smoke. It’s just coincidence, he tells himself, that Jaebum and Jackson had interacted, that they had been together and now were both close to that line that separates death and life, a line growing flimsier and harder to see by the day. Jinyoung sighs, shakes his head. 

“I think he just ran away, though. Since he was, you know, a closet gay,” Youngjae says, takes a sip of his milk, “Are we still down for this weekend? Movies at your place?” 

Jinyoung takes a second to shrug, “I’ll let you know later.” 

His heart is still racing, but he manages to continue a charade of normalcy, lets every suspicion he has rot in silence.

—

What he does decide to do, though, is talk to Jaebum, to assure himself that nothing is different; that he’s still that same kid he grew up with, still his old best friend — his  _ current  _ best friend; that he still smokes after school, that his priorities include marijuana and the occasional pill and definitely not  _ murder _ , especially not serial. He isn’t sure of when to find him, but Jaebum makes that choice for him. 

He smells Jaebum before he sees him. 

It isn’t smoke, though, or alcohol or weed or burnt buildings or even corpses. It smells, to his surprise,  _ good.  _ A layer of soap, of lotion, of an expensive cologne all dusted in a vague forest scent — it smells like a dream, what he imagines men should smell like; what he imagines Wonpil will smell like in the future. Like a man, a responsible man, a man who takes care of himself, a man with some femininity. Jinyoung stands at his locker and fantasizes about the smell, about the possibility. He has a mirror on his locker door and he checks to see if the zit on his forehead from yesterday is finally disappearing; pleased with its exit, he slams the door closed and a note falls out and behind the door is Jaebum, smiling, leaning against the row of lockers with folded arms. 

Jaebum, by all accounts, looks  _ different _ . His eyes, not an ounce of redness in them, look both hazy and alert — bedroom eyes — and his lips have the faintest hint of gloss and his skin almost glows, even in the poorly lit hallway — no hint of any cuts on his forehead, either; he doesn’t wear his usual oversized clothing but a white fitted shirt instead, tucked into dark, belted chinos; socks and sandals have been replaced by proper shoes and he wears, to Jinyoung’s surprise, a leather jacket. 

Two things happen: the sight steals Jinyoung’s breath because Jaebum looks  _ good _ , unbelievably so; like he looked in Jinyoung’s first wet dream, a fantasy he had told no one about, a fantasy now come to life complete with a confident smile, with brushed and styled hair; and the smell is all him, Jinyoung realizes, and this makes his stomach feel heavy with something that might be hunger, might be need. 

The second thing: the sight makes Jinyoung panic because Jaebum looks  _ good _ , unbelievably so; unlike what he looked like a few weeks ago and unlike what he’s ever looked like before and Jinyoung might not just be psychic but a powerful one at that if he could instill such a change in the universe; more than that, he worries for a second that Jaebum might be dead and this, whatever this might be, is someone else in his body now coming to avenge its physical vessel’s last wish of revenge on the boy who abandoned him. 

“Hi,” Jaebum says, and his voice sounds like a song, almost flirty, “I was hoping to catch you before you left, Jinyoung.”

He says Jinyoung’s name with a tiny breath, like a sigh, like his name were a beautiful thing and it makes Jinyoung wary. To fill in the time he squats down and picks up the paper that fell from the locker. When he stands, Jaebum is still there, staring intently. His eyes don’t stay fixed to one thing — they seem to drink Jinyoung in, each piece of him, each tiny little detail.

Then Jaebum sighs again and his eyes settle on Jinyoung’s.

“I wanted to ask you,” he stands up straight, looks a bit taller than Jinyoung remembers, “If you were free this weekend. You know, there’s this place up in the mountain, near the cliff, that has a good view of the stars. We always wanted to go when we were little but we never got to — we can go now. Get a burger, drive up the path, park, watch the stars for a while. What do you think?” 

Jinyoung’s jaw clenches so his mouth doesn’t hang open; none of this seems real, not the honeyed voice, the adoring eyes, that nostalgic flutter in his chest that comes whenever an old string of memory is tugged on, almost like a bell ringing. This image of Jaebum, much closer to how he first met him, how he used to be, warms Jinyoung; it disarms him. This is his best friend, he thinks, and Jaebum’s eyes seem to tell the same story, seem to glimmer with the same memory. 

Mostly to catch his breath, to think things through, he unfolds the note and reads it: 

_ Jinyoung,  _ it reads,  _ Don’t forget our movie date this weekend. I’ll pick you up Saturday, I’m looking forward to it. I miss you. - Wonpil.  _

Reading it incites another flutter inside of him, not nostalgic but hopeful, not brushed with the past but speckled with the future. 

“So, what do you say?” 

Jinyoung looks up at Jaebum, then back at the note, then to the empty space between his shoes and he panics…

* * *

 

CHOICES: 

**A:** GO ON DATE WITH WONPIL  
**B:** GO TO MOUNTAIN WITH JAEBUM  
**C:** HOST MOVIE NIGHT WITH BAMBAM AND YOUNGJAE  
**D:** STAY HOME AND STUDY 

 


	3. choices .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jaebum won! okay, so i realize my mistake in making the choices /people/ based... so i'm trying to disguise them a little. remember, there are no right choices but there is always a wrong one! one choice will always end the story in a chapter, one way or another... choose wisely. : ) also posting this early because I’m drepessesd

It takes only a moment for the panic to pull apart like clouds, to leave a sunny clarity behind — of course he has to go with Jaebum, has to confront him about Jackson, about the night of the fire, about the concert, what he saw, what he knows. He’s read enough Nancy Drew to know that much. Besides, he doubts he could say no, not when he looks up and Jaebum is still gazing at him with those eyes, as if he’s never seen Jinyoung before and is happy that he has; that look that makes Jinyoung feel like he’s brushed up against something warm and soft, like velvet sliding between his fingers except this sensation is everywhere. It surrounds him like a haze.

“Yes,” Jinyoung says with a tiny breath, and the more he stares into Jaebum’s eyes the less he feels like he can look away; they draw him in with their own gravity. They start to get big, too, like two pools, dark and wide and — he holds his breath when he sees himself reflected in miniature, and even this is beautiful, even this is calling his name to get closer and closer and closer until there is no space.

Then Jaebum blinks and the world clatters back into place. The hallway is loud with the murmurs of the school: a boy is yelling too loud, two girls are laughing, someone drops their lunch, a hundred lockers open and a hundred close, filling the hall with the sounds of metal clanging, latching, locking. Jinyoung realizes he’s leaning forward, like he’s trying to hear Jaebum better so he stands up straight, pats the front of his thighs, smiles to himself, and avoids Jaebum’s eyes. 

“Okay — pick me up on Friday. Burgers and the mountain.” 

He keeps his gaze on the ground, even when Jaebum confirms the date with a click of his tongue, says goodbye and pinches Jinyoung’s bottom before he walks away. Only then does he look up and lean against the lockers — his knees, suddenly, are weak as he thinks of what that pinch could mean, what it could all mean. 

—

The next day he finds Wonpil after his chemistry class. Even if they’re both seniors, both in advanced classes, their schedules rarely overlap. While Jinyoung prefers physics and engineering — knowing how things work, or how they could work — Wonpil is more interested in chemistry and the nature of things. 

Jinyoung often fantasizes about what this mix could mean: he could create a machine — a robot, perhaps — and could design the software, the hard drive, all the pieces it required to function, and Wonpil, he could create, well, he could create — his mind draws a blank. Jinyoung stares out, smiling into the empty hallway outside of Wonpil’s class. Maybe he could create the fuel, he thinks — yes, the fuel. 

He sighs, dreamily, just as the bell rings and the class files out. Last, always last, is Wonpil, only leaving after having a short discussion with his teachers, something he claims helps with recommendation letters. This knowledge makes Jinyoung’s heart flutter: Wonpil is always so prepared. And when he appears, Jinyoung holds his breath. There he is, Jinyoung thinks, his future husband bundled up in a wooly sweater, with dark khakis, with too-thick glasses and long, messy hair. 

“Hey,” Jinyoung says, gives a tiny wave and Wonpil turns around and walks towards him with a smile that takes a second to unfold on his pretty little lips. 

“Hey, what’s up? Are we still going to the movies this weekend?” 

Jinyoung plays with the straps of his backpack, lowers his gaze to Wonpil’s shoulders and shakes his head. 

“Something came up,” he says, “Sorry. Maybe we can go next weekend?” 

Wonpil considers this, tilts his head.

“Next week the debate team has a match,” he says, “Do you want to go see us compete? I can give you a ride to and back — we’re leaving right after school. We can hang out after the match, maybe there’s a drive-in movie. It’ll just be you and me.” 

Jinyoung always imagined that he would hear a choir at the gates of heaven, or the swell of violins, or a full orchestra of tiny, chubby angels playing even tinier instruments. He never imagines that heaven would include a guy burping near them, a girl crying on her way to the bathroom, a teacher yelling at a student, two jocks pushing each other into lockers. But it does, somehow, and in the distance someone opens the door that leads outside so when Jinyoung looks up, Wonpil wears a halo of sunlight behind his large head. 

“Yes,” Jinyoung says, feels near tears, overwhelmed — death and murder and fires are a distant memory to him; Wonpil continues to be an escapist fantasy, something Jinyoung can look forward to, something untouched by his other troubles. 

“Cool, I’ll meet you at your locker on Tuesday,” Wonpil says and Jinyoung nods. They share a smile, something as warm as the palms of hands, the spaces between the fingers. Then Wonpil continues, “It’s a date, then.” 

Jinyoung’s heart stops so quickly that he reaches up and clutches his chest and a cloud of worry flickers over Wonpil’s face but Jinyoung fakes a smile and keeps nodding and takes a step back, turns around, and rushes around the corner to the bathroom to check his pulse — to check if he’s alive. 

— 

“This is the  _ third  _ time you’ve bailed on us,” Youngjae says when Jinyoung tells them the news. The lunchroom is crowded with conversations of every color, muddling the air with sound, but Youngjae’s voice is so sharp that it slices through the white noise; it sounds like he’s right there, in Jinyoung’s ears, which makes him wonder where the people around him are getting these abilities to move and speak and act so clearly.

“Third time!” Bambam chimes.

“I’m sorry — it’s just — Jaebum needs me to go somewhere with him.”

“Oh, so now  _ Jaebum  _ is your best friend?” Youngjae says, annoyed — not yet angry, “Sure treats you like it.”

“ _ Sure _ treats you like it,” Bambam taunts.

Jinyoung looks at both of them, his mouth hangs open. He never knew a movie night could be so damaging; he almost feels guilty. Then he thinks of Jaebum’s smile — his gaze, dreamy, alluring — and the guilt falls off like an old scab. 

“I’m sorry? How can I make it up to you guys?” 

Youngjae and Bambam look at each other, seem to debate with their eyes whether to accept his apology. Then Bambam nods in Jinyoung’s direction and Youngjae turns his head. 

“There  _ is  _ one thing you could do to make it up.”

“Just one thing!” Bambam adds. 

“What is that?” he answers, narrows his eyes, “Nothing weird, right?” 

Youngjae laughs, but it sounds hollow.

“Nothing weird,” he says, “I promise.”

Jinyoung throws his lunch at Bambam before he can finish saying “We promise!” 

And this little agreement is why Jinyoung finds himself on his bed after-school on Friday. Youngjae had driven all three of them to his house with no explanation, with no plan, either. They drew the curtains closed, lit four candles at each corner of the room. 

“Where’s your mom again?” Youngjae asks, closing the door while Bambam zips open the extra duffel bag they’d been carrying all day. 

“She’s on a trip for the weekend,” he mumbles, watching Bambam’s fingers, “With Charles. What is that — no, no, no, not at my  house!” 

Bambam slips out a ouija board and sets it on the edge of Jinyoung’s bed. Just one glance and Jinyoung notices the badly designed alphabet, the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ printed in a font that must have the name “spooky” somewhere in the title; even the wooden triangle with the glass inside looks cheap and inauthentic, though he doubts he knows what authentic would look like. Still, his heart grows uneasy, heavy and cluttered and he can smell smoke in the distance, hears the echo of a pig squeal in his ear.

“ _ Not  _ at my house — this stuff is creepy,” Jinyoung says, firmer now.

“You promised,” Youngjae says, even firmer, and that sweet, simple face, made of only a few lines, of few shapes, twists into anger and Jinyoung fears this more than any pig, than any fire. 

“Fine,” he huffs, “But just until Jaebum comes — and I’m not playing with you.”

Bambam and Youngjae share a look, and it’s Bambam that looks back at Jinyoung, Bambam that shakes his head. 

“We need three people.”

“We’ve been…  _ investigating  _ the murders and the fires,” Youngjae says as they all fold their legs and sit in a small triangle around the board, Youngjae with his back to the window by the bed, Bambam with his back to the wall, Jinyoung with his back to the door, their figures lit by the shifting candle flames, “And we kind of ran out of clues. We need a little help to get past this dead end.” 

Jinyoung’s throat feels rough, his mouth dry. He licks his lips but to no avail; he thinks he starts sweating, but he’s too nervous to tell. He wants to get water but Youngjae puts two fingers on the planchette, then four; he looks at the other two and they both follow suit. The piece is cold and a shiver runs up Jinyoung’s spine. Quietly, he wishes Jaebum would hurry up and whisk him away.

“Okay, so, first things first… is anybody here with us?” Youngjae announces to no one in particular. 

He doesn’t expect it to move, really, but when it does, he quickly blames either Bambam and Youngjae. This must be a way to get back at him, he thinks, so he plays along, feels less nervous; if everything is a joke, then this board must not be real, or this game, or the piece that moves almost elegantly to “YES.” 

They take a moment to look at each other: Youngjae looks focused, Bambam looks the most scared of the three, and Jinyoung tries to hold his composure. The back of his neck starts to sweat. 

“Did you die in the fire two weeks ago?” Youngjae continues and Jinyoung fights the tremble in his wrist. Every time his eyes close he sees the pig, the fire, Jaebum dying in his bed in that order. A tiny procession of nightmares that only worsens when the piece drags their fingers in a circle before returning to “YES.” 

Youngjae looks around but neither Bambam nor Jinyoung meet his gaze, too busy trying not to freak out; Youngjae seems unphased when he asks, “Was the fire an accident?” 

Like routine, the piece moves in a circle and then stops at “NO.” Youngjae doesn’t waste his time, moves on to the next question. 

“Do you know who started the fire?” 

Again, the circle, the pause, then back to “NO.” 

“Do you know why they started the fire?” 

Another circle, another few seconds of thick, thick silence that Jinyoung feels might get stuck in his throat, that he feels all around him, like curtains of air closing in on him, suffocating him as the piece moves to cover “YES.” 

Youngjae is louder now, almost yelling, “Why did they start the fire?” 

Jinyoung feels like screaming but his body is immobile — his lips won’t part, his eyes won’t blink, he feels stuck to the little piece going in a small circle and his arms and fingers and hands move only at its command, quicker now, as if running out of breath — as if running out of time as it lands on each letter for only a second: F-O-R-H-I-M.

“Who is him?!” Youngjae yells and Jinyoung wishes he could peel away but he is stuck and his eyes start to burn and tear up and he’s about to cry and the piece moves in a circle then stops. It pauses and whatever had Jinyoung pinned like a prisoner to this board disappears. He pulls his hands away as if burnt, holds them in his lap, blinks away the tears and looks around. Youngjae and Bambam are looking at him but they’re not Youngjae and Bambam — in place of their faces is the face of that pig, that same pig from the night of the concert, but it’s not crying anymore or scared or squealing but it’s  _ smiling _ , two pigs just grinning at him like they’re having fun and before he can scream, he blinks and Bambam and Youngjae are back, asking if he’s okay. 

He leans away from Youngjae’s touch and shakes his head and that’s when the candles go out. Youngjae moves quickly to pull apart the curtains and the day outside is stuck between afternoon and evening and the room lights up in a blue so rich Jinyoung can almost feel it — like the whole world were underwater. Jinyoung gulps in air and Youngjae looks like he’s about to apologize but Bambam screams and points and Jinyoung follows the finger to the ouija board where the planchette is spinning madly. Youngjae stands in bed and Bambam leans back and falls and Jinyoung jumps to his feet, starts backing to the door and the planchette stops suddenly, which would be a relief if it weren’t pointing its little wooden pointer at him. 

They all go silent, they all swallow and Youngjae says something and Bambam might be groaning but Jinyoung can only hear his heartbeat that has left his chest and now pounds against each of his bones like an angry fist, trying to escape; then it settles inside his ears until all he can hear is that wild drumming — desperate and thumping and throbbing. 

Then the piece moves, still elegantly and smoothly, its path as fluid as a snake’s and it slips off the board, slides over the sheets, sinks to the floor and slithers in Jinyoung’s direction and he struggles with the door but throws it open. He stumbles down the hall, always looking back at the piece that follows him patiently, scraping the wood floor quietly, and behind it is Youngjae and Bambam following with wide eyes. Jinyoung falls once, twice, and after the third he crawls, crying, past the stairs and to the bathroom. There he presses up against the door and accepts death and whatever it may bring but the piece does not kill him, the piece does not notice him.

When it reaches the staircase it twists to the right and continues its path and Jinyoung hears its tiny thumps on the steps as it goes downstairs. Youngjae helps him stand and together they follow the planchette, all holding hands — cold as ice — and pressed together and shaking, stumbling from time to time like a poorly built organism. They follow the planchette down the stairs, across the living room and the piece, never hesitating, heads to the door and when it hits it — wood against wood — a chimed rendition of the first ten seconds of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” fills the house. 

“Dude — Cyndi Lauper is haunting your house,” Bambam whispers and it makes sense for a second until Jinyoung remembers his mother last week claiming that she wanted two things: to have fun, and a doorbell that matched her energy. 

“That’s the doorbell,” he says, voice shaky, “S-someone’s at the door.” 

Their arms are still tangled, their fingers twisted into each others palms and around their wrists and forearms and, somehow, Bambam has wrapped his leg around Jinyoung’s so that they are, for the time being, impenetrable. And they move as one, carefully this time, step by step. Youngjae peels his hand away to the turn the knob, to pull the door towards them and they all stare, wide-eyed, adrenaline still rushing through them as it creaks open. 

Jaebum is on the other side with a smile on his face, cocky and confident. He’s leaning against the doorframe wearing that leather jacket and a blue t-shirt that shows off his chest and in his other hand is a bouquet of flowers; he drinks in the sight in front of him without the slightest hint of surprise, looks almost pleased. 

“Boys,” he says, “I didn’t know we were playing twister.” 

Bambam gulps and Youngjae sucks in a breath before saying, “Actually, me and Bambam were just leaving — have fun!” 

—

At the edge of town is a mountain surrounded by hills with a hamburger restaurant pressed up against its side. By the time they get there, the sky is a dark blue. The stars are still washed out and the moon hides behind a curtain of thin clouds, but the night is unmistakably dark. The hamburger restaurant — Herbert’s Hammies — looks like it’s been made entirely of light: a towering neon sign, pillars covered in white tile, a white interior with too many bulbs. It looks like a creature with glowing insides, drawing them into its mouth; ready to feed. 

“You guys shouldn’t play those things,” Jaebum says, surprisingly reasonable and Jinyoung is glad that he’d shared this bit with him. It almost feels like old times, just two friends telling each other what they missed from each other’s life, as if they  _ had  _ to know everything that happened, down to the kind of toothpaste their mother bought. And he feels comfortable until he remembers he leaves out the most important detail: the planchette sliding to the door — sliding to  _ Jaebum _ .

The flowers he bought for him are still in his lap, and he plays with them absently, letting the smell waft up to him. Jaebum still plays trot music in the car and Jinyoung clings to this, glad that some things just don’t change. 

At his throat is a tangle of words he doesn’t dare to say out loud, complete with accusations, with questions, and when Jaebum parks he swallows the knot. Jinyoung looks around, then throws the flowers in the back and plays, instead, with the ends of his Star Wars sweater. 

“Let’s go inside,” Jaebum says, steps out of the car and, faster than Jinyoung can move, goes around to open the door for him, offers a hand. Jinyoung, flushed, gets up with Jaebum’s help and tries not to notice when Jaebum puts his hand on the small of Jinyoung’s back or how nice it feels to have a little pressure there, a little nudge guiding him to the entrance as if he would be lost without it. Part of him enjoys it and part of him panics and these conflicting emotions go to war inside of him just as a boy behind them calls Jaebum’s name. 

They both turn around and Jaebum takes a step forward, in front of him, and for a second Jinyoung feels protected. 

“Hey big boy,” the stranger says, hooks a finger on Jaebum’s belt, nearly tugging him forward, and Jinyoung tries not to notice this, either.

“Mark,” Jaebum says, his voice still light, airy, “You’re here, too.” 

“I love to eat,” Mark sighs, as if still hungry, “Can’t get enough — going to a party, though. Wanna come?” 

Jinyoung crosses his arms, feels the bud of anger at his chest. It isn’t rage that grows, but a strange and curious jealousy — what could he be jealous of? — that makes him say, sternly, “He can’t — he’s busy.”

Both Jaebum and Mark look his way and Mark wears a devilish smile that keeps growing until it blossoms into grin, until it fills up half his face and he steps closer to Jinyoung, fascinated. 

“Who is this?” he asks, playfully, “You’re so  _ cute _ .” 

Mark keeps getting closer, his eyes wide, and then he jerks backward suddenly and Jinyoung can see where Jaebum is grabbing him by his collar. He pulls him back one more time, shoves him towards the parking lot as Mark laughs, bright, lovely sounds that bounce in the air like rubber balls; his voice, too, has that playful charm when he calls, “I’ll see you later — both of you.” 

And he disappears into the dark parking lot, now made darker by the light from the restaurant. 

“A friend of yours?” 

Jaebum cocks his head to the side, pushes out his jaw, “Something like that.” 

After that, they go inside, walking closer now, Jaebum’s hand no longer at the small of his back but firmly at his waist, his fingers digging gently into the fabric there and Jinyoung finds that he doesn’t mind this, not at all. 

But the touch and Jaebum’s presence and the brightness in the restaurant make his thoughts hazy and confused and before he can fall into another spell like he had with the ouija, he turns to Jaebum, confronts him.

He doesn’t know where to start — whether being abandoned or the fire — so he starts in the middle, with the most disturbing detail: “I saw a pig.” 

Jaebum looks back at him, confused, “A pig? Where?  _ Here _ ?” 

“No, no — the night of that concert — of my competition.” 

Jaebum just hums, pulls his hand away, gets in line. 

“I saw some people carrying this pig and this pig — god, it was awful — it was like crying and screaming and —” Saying it out loud makes him relive it and he starts to sweat and his hands tremble and Jaebum reaches out to hold his fingers in his, brushes his thumb over Jinyoung’s knuckles and the touch is so soft that Jinyoung’s voice wades in his throat before it becomes undone. Even the story he was telling starts unraveling and he falls into that hole again where it feels like his mind is going in different directions, wanting the truth but also wanting the lie if it’s this sweet; if it’s this careful; if it smells just like Jaebum’s cologne; if it feels just like his fingers rubbing circles over his palm, the back of his hand, his wrist, up his arm —

“Jinyoung?! Jaebum?!” 

They both turn and there is Nayeon, looking as bright and cheerful as ever. Every single time he’s surprised at how wide her smile can get; how it takes over her face until it’s all people notice, all people remember. She’s stepping away from the counter, headed their way. 

“What a coincidence!” Her voice isn’t shrill, but it definitely requires patience. Still, Jinyoung is glad to see her, the only normal one of his friends, it seems. “What are you guys doing here?” 

“We’re on a date,” Jaebum says and Jinyoung, blushing, shakes his head. 

“No, we’re not. We were getting some burgers.”

Nayeon looks at Jinyoung first, smiling her usual smile, but when she turns to Jaebum she seems more interested; she studies him and her smile shrinks, but recovers its size after a second. 

“That’s perfect,” she says, takes them by the hand and pulls them along; the place is busy enough to have crowds but not enough to slow Nayeon down, “Come sit at our table — I was here with my boyfriend.” 

Jinyoung is pained, but when he glances at Jaebum he looks delighted to be included so he closes his mouth, swallows his words for the time being. They follow Nayeon to a booth in the corner of the restaurant where the lights, still a dial too bright, seem to soften and lessen. She sits them down on one side, slides into the other. 

“So,” she starts, cheery, “What’s going on with you two?”

“Jinyoung was just talking about a pig he saw, loose in the city.” 

“A pig?” Nayeon tips her head to the side, looks confused, “In the city? Was it cute?”

“Y-yes, here in town and no, it wasn’t cute. It was kind of scary — it was the day of our competition —”

Before he finishes, someone else walks up to the booth and slides next to Nayeon and it only takes a second to recognize the boy with buzzed hair, the one he’d ran into, the one that kept cursing as they dragged the pig along the cement. Jinyoung’s words crumble and hide under his tongue and his mouth hangs open and his heart stops and, by instinct, he reaches under the table, finds Jaebum’s hand and squeezes his fingers. As if answering him, Jaebum rubs his knuckles, starts to knead out the stiffness. 

“Sungjin!” Nayeon screams, “This is Jinyoung, from the mathlete team, and Jaebum. They’ve been friends forever — this is Sungjin, my boyfriend. He’s always shy and never wants to get out ot meet any of my friends but he can’t hide now.” 

Sungjin’s smile is a simple shape: a tight-lipped line, the most subtle of curves but still, Jinyoung swears he’ll see it in his nightmares, especially when Sungjin points his gaze at him and the corners of his lips turn the slightest bit upwards. 

“There’s always places to hide,” he says, “It’s nice to meet you both.” 

“Nice to meet you, too,” Jaebum answers and Jinyoung manages a nod.

“Jinyoung was just talking about a pig,” Nayeon says, “He saw it here, in the city. I mean, it’s not  _ that  _ weird but can you imagine? Seeing a pig just out and about in the city?” 

“That’s crazy,” Sungjin’s voice, despite his smile, sounds flat — amused but unsurprised, “I can’t even picture it. A  _ pig _ ? Who would bring a  _ pig  _ into the city like that? Then let it loose?” 

Jinyoung lets go of Jaebum’s fingers and Jaebum, almost immediately, reaches over to rest his hand on Jinyoung’s thigh; he starts to rub it and Jinyoung places his hand over his, tries to focus on the touch so that he doesn’t focus on how his stomach twirls — the thought of eating, now, might make him vomit. 

“Maybe we should get some bacon burgers,” Sungjin continues, “Stay on theme.” 

“Bacon sounds so good,” Nayeon chimes, leans in, “I  _ love  _ bacon.” 

“N-no, that’s fine — actually, we should get going. Jaebum still has to show me a few things and my mom doesn’t let me stay out late,” Jinyoung lies, starts to stand up.

Jaebum turns to him, confused, “Your mom is —”

“Very strict, I know,” Jinyoung finishes and pushes on his shoulder until he stands and slides out of the booth, “So we should go. Now.” 

Naeyon whines and frowns and hugs her boyfriend’s arm, “That’s too bad. I hope we didn’t spoil the mood.”

“You didn’t, it’s fine, I just lost track of time,” Jinyoung says, quick, “I’ll see you at school.”

“See you — take care out there. You too, Jaebum,” Nayeon responds and Jinyoung starts to leave, and when he thinks they’re safe he hears Sungjin’s voice behind him. 

“See you later, Jinyoung. Be safe.” 

—

Back at the car, Jinyoung refuses to talk. 

“Did I do something?” Jaebum says when he backs out of the parking lot and gets on the path leading to the cliff, still without Jinyoung saying a word. Quietly, he adds, “Are you embarrassed of me?” 

“No,” Jinyoung mutters, curls up even more in his seat — as much as the seat belt allows. He feels overwhelmed, mostly, partly scared, partly worried, partly apologetic that this had to happen  _ today _ . Because a piece of him wanted to come for the simple fact that he misses Jaebum and spending time with him and laughing and having a good time. Even after all these years, nobody knows him better than Jaebum and Jinyoung has taken it for granted. 

This is when he decides to postpone his questions until later, when he decides to sit up straight and look out at the dark forest around them as Jaebum navigates through the impossibly curved roads that alternate between asphalt and dirt. 

“I just didn’t want to spend time with Nayeon,” he says, “This is our time.” 

Jaebum looks pleased with this, driving with a smile. He takes one hand off the steering wheel and reaches over, rests it on Jinyoung’s knee and it’s so warm that Jinyoung allows it. He leans back and they drive in silence save for the trot music throbbing in the stereo. 

After a few minutes, Jaebum slows the car and goes off the road. The ride gets bumpy and uneven and Jinyoung peeks out the window and notices the trees from the side of the road, except now they’re on all four sides of them. Even the path Jaebum follows is full of them, as if the trees pull apart just for them. Jaebum’s hand, now higher, a light grip on his thigh, protects him from fear, but he feels uneasy. 

“Where are we going?” he asks and Jaebum starts to glance over at him, smiling, as if delighted by the question — by Jinyoung. 

“It’s a path I found when hiking. People go up here, but it’s more… private.”

“You hike?!” 

“Of course,” Jaebum says, pulls his hand from Jinyoung’s thigh to better navigate a thinner bend of the path, “You should pay attention.” 

“I  _ do  _ pay attention,” Jinyoung sits up now, defensive, “And you have never hiked before — at least, you never told me.” 

“I do, but you don’t listen,” Jaebum says, still smiling, not set on making Jinyoung feel bad, but he does anyway. After all, Jinyoung listens, Jinyoung cares, Jinyoung is a  _ good  _ friend. But the more he looks at Jaebum, the older he looks, more man than boy, and Jinyoung realizes he hasn’t been paying attention; that Jaebum has been growing up beside him without him noticing. 

“You used to listen,” Jaebum continues, turning the car, used to the dips in the road, the tight curves while Jinyoung grips the door and the dashboard to feel safe, “You used to listen, but you stopped when you didn’t like what you were hearing. People keep growing up, though, even if there’s no one around to hear them.” 

“I — well — what did I miss?” Jinyoung tears his eyes from the road and looks only at Jaebum: the bump on his nose, the insistent jaw, the curved neck. Jaebum turns to him and the trees clear away and the car goes even slower, then stops. He turns off the car and the trot music disappears and in comes the sounds of nature: the rustle of leaves, the scurry of animals, the hoot of an owl, the song of cicadas. Behind Jaebum’s head Jinyoung can see stars, so many that he leans closer, then turns his head to take in the sight. 

In front of them is a cliff that ends abruptly and if he cranes his neck, he can see their entire town, small but studded in lights and beyond that he sees mountains on the horizon and, above, the sky is alive with stars that pulse and throb like tiny hearts. He wants to see more but he only sees the roof of the car and that’s when he turns back to Jaebum, who doesn’t seem interested in the view, just Jinyoung.

He looks curious and amused and leans in closer to Jinyoung, “There’s so much you missed, Jinyoung. You have to catch up.” 

The moment is magnetic — not only because he feels drawn to Jaebum, to his gaze, and not only because his hands want nothing more than to reach over and touch him, to make sure he’s real, to make this dream more tangible but also because the air itself is thick and bubbling with energy, like static. Afraid, though, of what this could mean, and afraid of this new way of looking at Jaebum, he throws a question between them.

“Who was Jackson — I mean, what happened to him? What were you doing with him?” 

And despite what he hoped this question would do (make Jaebum’s jaw tense, make him panic, maybe make him angry, make him spill a confession, even) Jaebum seems even  _ more  _ amused and he leans in close, close enough that Jinyoung has no problem telling where Jaebum is looking: first at his forehead, then his eyes, his nose, before settling, finally, on his lips. He’s still looking at them when he says: 

“Jackson was a screamer, did you know? Was so whiny and loud, I just couldn’t take it anymore. So we stopped hanging out,” and he keeps getting closer, close enough that when he breathes through his nose, Jinyoung can feel it on his cheek and close enough that Jaebum’s whispers unfold over Jinyoung’s lips, “I bet I can make you scream, too.” 

Then Jaebum’s eyes close and he closes the space and claims Jinyoung’s first kiss with actual human lips and his eyes are wide, frantic, still open. But Jaebum takes his lower lip in his and it’s warm, damp and lovely and he thinks he feels the drag of teeth so his eyes close and he melts into the feeling. Jaebum is leaning over as much as he can and his hands find Jinyoung’s thighs, climb up higher, closer to his crotch and this sends static up his dick and it’s all too much. Then Jaebum pulls away, lifts his hand for a second and Jinyoung’s seatbelt clicks. 

The seat belt slides up, leaves Jinyoung bare and that’s when Jaebum climbs over to straddle him. He reaches down, pulls the seat handle, and Jinyoung’s seat clicks back until he’s almost laying down in Jaebum’s tiny car. Jaebum sits up — as much as he can with the low roof, the short doors — and takes off his jacket, then peels off his shirt and Jinyoung sees what else has grown up: Jaebum’s shoulders are decently broad and his chest looks firm with muscle and tiny shadows mark the abs on his stomach and a thin line of hair connects his navel to the top of his jeans. 

Jinyoung isn’t sure when he stopped breathing but now he takes a big gulp and sighs and his hands, by their own accord, reach up and touch Jaebum’s chest first and he feels a racing heart beneath his fingers and his skin is  _ too  _ soft, makes him want to touch the rest of it. And he does, slowly, rakes his fingers down to the top of his stomach and then palms the ridges of muscle below and finally hooks his fingers around Jaebum’s belt. 

He looks up and Jaebum is grinning, proud of himself; then his stomach tenses, his biceps tighten and Jinyoung looks back down and Jaebum’s fingers undo his belt, the button of his jeans, do away with the zipper, and pull down his pants and Jinyoung knows immediately that he isn’t wearing underwear because  _ it  _ springs free, already hard, its head wet. 

His cheeks, already warm and blushing, start to boil and his hands hover in the air like he’s a machine that’s stuck — his software must be malfunctioning because here is a half-naked boy — a  _ beautiful  _ boy — and here is his dick, there are his hands, and he isn’t doing what he always dreamed of doing: taking it slow, teasing, being in control and milking it like a rancher with a deadline. 

Instead, his malfunctioning mind makes him say, “Your skin is so soft.” 

Jaebum doesn’t miss a beat and responds, “I shaved, trimmed, moisturized — all for  _ you _ .” 

And Jinyoung nearly cums hearing that last word because top on his list of his fantasies is acts of love but Jaebum gives him no time. He dips down and claims Jinyoung’s second kiss, and he must be getting better because there is suddenly a tongue in his mouth and he realizes his tongue is in Jaebum’s and they kiss like this, sloppily, slowly chipping away at the awkwardness to meet at that enticing rhythm that makes Jinyoung forget about breaths and air, about anything except the boy he’s kissing. Jaebum takes Jinyoung’s hands from the air and puts them behind him, on his bottom.

There will be no way to explain to his diary how the first time he’d kissed a boy had been the first night he’d been dry humped by a boy, too, because Jaebum folds himself so that his cock is rubbing against Jinyoung’s crotch and Jinyoung, with two handfuls of ass, has no option but to get hard. 

He kneads the flesh of Jaebum’s ass and squeezes and pushes the cheeks together and pulls them apart and his fingers slowly creep to the center while Jaebum stops kissing him, busies himself instead with biting his ear, kissing under it, sucking on random patches of his neck and jaw for a few seconds at a time. Jinyoung closes his eyes and they roll back and when he realizes that his hips, too, have given themselves over to nature and start rutting upwards, he hears the first bird. 

It sounds like a mistake, like a misheard bone cracking — probably his knee — but then the second comes, then the third, each time a louder thump against the window. Jaebum is still busy trying to suck the blood out of his throat but Jinyoung’s eyes open and he sees the fourth bird hit the window. It flutters for a second, confused, before it rams into the window again and Jinyoung’s boner is gone. The moment falls into ruins because at the other window is another bird, bigger than the other ones, and it tries to fly in place, as if peeking inside.

“Jaebum,” Jinyoung says and Jaebum just groans after he drags his tongue over Jinyoung’s collarbone and Jinyoung has to shake his shoulder and point to the owl that lands on the hood of the car, “Jaebum!” 

Finally Jaebum sits up and looks around, though he doesn’t look alarmed, just annoyed.

“Oh — fuck off,” he mutters and pulls up his pants so that he can stumble into the driver’s seat. He pulls the handle on the door and it pops open and a breeze flies into the car. Jaebum, who is on his knees, fumbling with something in the backseat, almost falls out. Jinyoung sits up as well and notices that it isn’t just birds watching them but every forest animal he can think of. They line the edge of the trees, deer standing behind squirrels, a rabbit sitting next to a fox, and behind these Jinyoung can see a bear hiding in the shadows, and if he squints, he swears he can see an oversized pig sitting up like a person, all eyes on the car.  

“What’s going on?” Jinyoung asks and he can barely hear himself. 

“They’re waiting.” 

“For what?!” 

Jaebum doesn’t answer, just leans back and pulls out a baseball bat from his backseat and steps outside, his jeans barely hanging on, wielding the bat like he’s first to pitch. Immediately the birds disperse except the owl on the hood. Jaebum gets closer and raises the bat but the owl takes the hint and flies away. Then Jaebum turns around to face the other animals, pauses, and the animals stare back and the scene is too much for Jinyoung so he reaches over and punches the middle of the steering wheel until the car spits out a honk. 

“Jaebum! Stop! Please — let’s go!” 

Everything is still for a second, an eerie silence that only the leaves interrupt. Then Jaebum turns to look at Jinyoung, then back at the animals, then back at Jinyoung. The bat sways in his hand as he heads back to the car and throws it in the backseat. He turns the key in the ignition, doesn’t bother with his seatbelt, and puts the car in reverse. Jinyoung, meanwhile, pulls the handle of his seat until it flies up to press against his back. Jaebum puts his hand behind Jinyoung’s head, holding the headrest and the other wraps around the steering wheel and he drives them out of the clearing and into the forest entirely in reverse. 

Jinyoung is awed for only a second before he stares at his shoes, scuffed up and dirty, and avoids looking outside — even when the forest is flush against them and trees scrape their branches on top of the car and the windows. He keeps staring at his  shoes — when did he clean them last? — and instead of the hoots from outside, he listens to the trot music, now sounding haunting and empty, teasing in its cheeriness. 

He doesn’t look up until the path under them smooths out into asphalt and Jaebum stops the car, starts driving forward again and the town comes into view. He glances at Jaebum who still has no shirt on, no jacket, but he doesn’t seem cold.

“You’re shirtless,” Jinyoung says with a breath and Jaebum looks at him, then at his torso.

“Huh,” he says, as if surprised by his own body, “Hand me my shirt — it’s under your feet, I think.” 

“No,” Jinyoung hears himself say, and it feels like someone else saying it because Jinyoung is not a  _ horny  _ teenager, never has been, but if anything might be able to soothe the fright still crawling in his spine, it might be the sight of Jaebum’s chest, his stomach, the curve of his ass — everything firm and chiseled but still soft and pliable and grabbable, “Don’t put a shirt on. Maybe buckle your pants.” 

Jaebum, though, is driving, so he says, “Do it for me.” 

He lifts his hips off the seat and Jinyoung reaches over and pulls his jeans over the curve of his bottom, goes to the front to tuck his dick back into his jeans but instead, his hormones raging, he holds it in his hand and starts to stroke, gently at first like he does himself every other night before sleeping. He always starts by squeezing, getting the blood going, then pushing all the way down to the base then pulling up, tugging and twisting and pressing his thumb against the head that’s already wet with precum and Jaebum, his hormones raging, hardens quickly between his fingers. Jinyoung feels like a magician because Jaebum’s dick had been flaccid and now, like magic, in his hands is an erection, a real one, and he continues stroking until Jaebum says, “Wait.” 

Jinyoung looks up at him, watches his head tip forward, watches his mouth fall open as a fat drop of spit comes out. Jaebum has good aim and it falls mostly on the head of his cock, wetting Jinyoung’s fingers in the process but, surprisingly, he isn’t grossed out; instead he wonders, remembering their kiss, how much of this saliva is Jaebum’s and how much is his and how much had mixed. He spreads the spit with his fingers until his cock is all coated, glistening every time they cross a street lamp and the car lights up in orange and yellows that make Jaebum look like he’s on fire. Then he continues stroking with one hand, taking his time to explore every ridge and every vein and sometimes he pauses to feel it throb against the palm of his hand, all wet and hot, and sometimes he just runs his thumb over the head, over the slit, and pulls it away to watch the sticky thread of cum that latches to his finger. The second time he does this Jaebum makes his cock twitch and Jinyoung almost laughs at how silly it looks, bobbing weakly, until Jaebum lifts his hips up and says, “I’m close.” 

He tightens his grip and starts to stroke again, faster this time, faster than the music in the speakers, using the pressure from every finger. Jaebum’s stomach tenses and his hands tighten around the steering wheel, which makes his arm harden into a spray of muscles. And when he finally cums in high spurts that rise and splatter over his chest and stomach, Jinyoung wishes he could lean over and lick him clean. 

But he doesn’t, tells himself that it would be crossing a line — sure he just had his first kiss, had touched, for the first time, a dick that wasn’t his, but licking cum off someone’s chest should be reserved for a second date, which makes him wonder if this was a date at all. 

Instead of licking him clean, he reaches down, finds his shirt. He leans over and wipes the cum away from his chest, from his stomach, from his cock that still throbs, still leaks, and from where it’s gotten his pubes wet. He is thorough and cleans him well and avoids his gaze as he says, “You can borrow one of mine.”

Then he tucks his cock back into his jeans, zips up the front, does the button, and buckles his belt. Then, satisfied, he leans back and looks up at Jaebum. The road near his house is dark but the moon lights him up in a beautiful shade of blue and Jaebum looks enamored, looks wistful, like Jinyoung is more than a teenage boy who happens to be his best friend, like he’s more than a nerdy snob who dreams too much, too often, and Jinyoung isn’t sure what to do with that. He isn’t sure, either, of why his stomach flips, and he feels both nervous and excited so he looks away as his street comes into view. 

The animals, Sungjin, the oujia board, and the fire are still on the back of his mind, but the present, for once, demands all of his attention.  

His driveway is empty and the lights are off and Jaebum parks slowly. The engine cuts off, Jinyoung breathes, turns. 

“Do you want to spend the night?” he asks and he hears himself as if he were miles away. His life, somehow, has gone from boring to exciting — a mix of horror movies and chick flicks and he wonders what his next move will be. 

Jaebum nods and pulls out the key, opens his door. Jinyoung does the same and they seem to float to the door of Jinyoung’s house, like they’re both made of air, like this night, besides the obvious horrors, is nothing less than meant to be. And when Jinyoung fishes out his house key and undoes the lock and pushes the door open, Jaebum hesitates and steps back. 

“I forgot something,” he says, “In the car.”

Jinyoung, already stepping inside, asks, “What?” 

“Condoms,” Jaebum says and that alone makes Jinyoung flush. He watches a shirtless Jaebum run back to his car and he tries to peer through the dimmed air of nighttime to make out the shape of his ass in his jeans. Jaebum pulls open the passenger door and pushes the seat all the way forward and leans in the back, his bottom half out in the open. Jinyoung bites his lip, and just when the hormones start to rage again, another figure appears from the right, wearing all black clothes and a ski mask. 

He jogs to Jaebum and pulls him out and wraps an arm around his neck from behind. With his free hand he covers Jaebum’s face with a cloth. Another man walks forward and helps to hold Jaebum down and Jinyoung takes a step back, shaking his head, watching his life flick from romance back to horror. He looks around him: there’s a rack of umbrellas and a large, metal vase as tall as his hips brimming with fake flowers. He thinks of the phone in the kitchen, too, as panic crawls over his skin like a furious colony of ants...

* * *

 

CHOICES:

**A:** USE AN UMBRELLA TO DEFEND JAEBUM  
**B:** USE THE VASE TO DEFEND JAEBUM  
**C:** CALL THE POLICE  
**D:** STAND THERE, DO NOTHING


	4. elixir .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg this chapter is so long for no reason so i tried to be quick and simple by the end of it so.... aldkfj i'm sorry.... chapter production all over the place anyway enjoy also aries season coming so celebrate with me @jjpsbf on twitter (also on curiouscat again) 
> 
> also TW: GORE... like two major times....

He pulls out an umbrella and runs outside. By now, the adrenaline numbs him: he is pure motion, pure instinct. He only knows how to swing the umbrella over and over until something happens — it hits the lankier one in the head, the one holding Jaebum’s hands down, and the man steps backwards, gripping the crown of his head. Jinyoung keeps swinging and swinging but he keeps missing and the umbrella almost slips from his hold so he tightens his grip and clicks the button on the handle. In the middle of a swing, the umbrella’s neck extends and stabs the man in the eye. He stumbles back, falls on the sidewalk and Jinyoung, feeling victorious, turns around and swings the umbrella with all of his strength and blindly hits Jaebum in the face.

Jaebum grunts and reaches up to grab his cheek and Jinyoung drops the umbrella and it clatters next to the other culprit writhing on the ground. In the confusion, the man stands up and runs to his partner, and they both scramble to stand and sprint away. Jinyoung turns around in time to watch them board a black Corolla with tinted windows before it speeds away, every single one of its lights turned off. Then Jinyoung looks back at Jaebum and he sees blood — beneath his eye is a tiny cut and Jinyoung reaches for it but Jaebum steps back. 

“Leave it,” he says and Jinyoung’s stomach drops. Jaebum picks up the umbrella, still clutching his cheek, and ushers Jinyoung to the door. 

Inside, with the adrenaline gone, Jinyoung sits on the couch in the living room and shakes: his hands tremble, his knees bump against one another, his teeth rattle as if he’d been running naked in piles of snow. After a second, he notices Jaebum sitting next to him, rubbing Jinyoung’s shoulder, and little by little, like ice melting into a pond in spring, his senses return to him. He can feel his toes again, his fingers, his hands, his arms, the heartbeat against his chest, the warm shape on his shoulder. 

“We have to call the police,” he says.

“No, no, no,” Jaebum sounds nervous, “They won’t help us — it’s over now. It’s all over.”

“But —”

“Trust me.” 

He turns to Jaebum, spots the blood stain on his cheek and sucks in a breath. 

“Jaebum —” His voice cuts off once Jaebum starts shaking his head but Jinyoung is insistent — with a purpose, he doesn’t shake or shiver, doesn’t feel as impotent. He stands and takes Jaebum’s hands and pulls him into the kitchen where he turns on the light and finds a towel. He wets it with warm water and Jaebum sits on the counter.

“Does it hurt?” he asks, stepping closer, and Jaebum shakes his head. He looks bored — almost annoyed — and Jinyoung doesn’t understand until he starts wiping away the blood, expecting the cut to show up. It never does. Even when he gets all the blood off, there is no sign of it ever being cut: the skin looks flawless, undisturbed, almost glows. 

“Where did it go?” Jinyoung asks after a second but Jaebum just shrugs, manages a smile. 

“Must have not been my blood.” 

Jinyoung takes a step back and Jaebum watches him, still smiling, and his lips are almost  _ teasing _ , like he knows something Jinyoung doesn’t. And he does, Jinyoung thinks, he knows everything — about the fire, about the murders, about himself. He keeps stepping back until he bumps into the counter behind him and Jaebum says, “Careful.” 

“I — I need a bath,” he answers, abandoning the towel in the kitchen. 

He walks slowly upstairs, Jaebum following. It’s been years since Jaebum has walked up this staircase and he takes his time looking at the portraits on the walls, mostly of Jinyoung with his mother, Jinyoung with his cousins, with extended family, with his grandparents. He spends the most time studying the pictures of Jinyoung with himself. 

His expression shifts from wonder to joy, and the third time Jinyoung looks back to watch him, Jaebum has lifted a finger to a picture of them in elementary school wearing matching costumes: two pirates with fake, painted-on beards. They both stop walking and Jinyoung watches Jaebum grin like he used to, with all his teeth, his eyes thinned into endearing lines and Jinyoung’s heart slows and he wonders they last took a picture together. Too long ago, he decides, but he still can’t shake the smile from downstairs or the missing cut so he turns around and walks to his room without looking back. He picks up a towel and a clean pair of underwear and when Jaebum walks in and sits on the bed, he says, “I’ll be right back.” 

He walks to the bathroom, steps inside, pulls the door shut. Then he turns on the knob on the tub so it fills with warm water while he undresses. He puts in the soap, watches the bubbles appear. When it’s almost full, he shuts it off and slips inside. 

The water and the bubbles and the silence of the bathroom start to calm his heart, soothe the tremble in his fingers. In a few minutes his eyes are closed, his neck on the edge of the tub, his body floating towards a calm, numb state. He has a glimpse of peace before the tears come in. It's slow at first, like a faucet that leaks, that leaves his cheeks with wet lines and nothing else but then it grows to heavy sobs that squeeze his chest and take up all the space in his lungs. He tries to be quiet but he can’t stop crying, not after this night, not after these few weeks — each event comes rushing forth now, trying to claw its way out through his eyes, through the gasps, making Jinyoung feel both cleansed and betrayed by his clumsy body. 

He lifts up his hands to wipe away the tears but they seem infinite, as if he will always be in this bathtub, always crying, stuck in some horrible loop of his own creation. The fire will always rage at the concert, the pig will always squeal, Jaebum will always be a centimeter out of reach. 

After a second, though, the sobbing simmers down and Jinyoung sinks into the bath enough to wet his face again, to slick his hair back. He sits up and hears the door, turns to see Jaebum walking towards him, fully nude. 

By instinct he covers himself as best as he can, looks nervous when he asks, “What are you doing?! Get out — I’m still bathing.” 

But Jaebum does not hear him, or if he does, he doesn’t seem to care. Instead he smiles at Jinyoung and his eyes change — a tiny glimmer crosses them. Like the black of his eyes have been slicked with ink and someone passes a candle over them; a quick glimpse of light; less than half a second but Jinyoung notices. He notices and wonders how long it’s been happening because, suddenly, he can’t come up with a reason as to  _ why  _ Jaebum can’t be in here. The tub is big enough for two people, Jaebum is his friend, and that smile and body, well, he doubts he can protest  _ that _ .

He's partly aware of his defenses turning off like a switch, how easily his defenses crumble, but mostly he’s aware of how nice this pull feels, as if he’s giving himself away to a current that runs through the air. And it feels so  _ good  _ not to think for once, to have someone else make a choice, and who is he to argue with a boy like Jaebum, so sure of what he wants, so cocky and boyish when approaches with a washcloth in hand and pats Jinyoung’s back so he scoots forward.

“Give me space,” Jaebum says, and Jinyoung obliges. It is so easy, after all, to bend his legs, to slide forward, to feel the ceramic slide under his bottom as Jaebum settles in behind him, his legs on either side of him, his chest grazing against his back. It is so easy to lean back, to rest his head against Jaebum’s shoulders and to sigh — he feels possessed in the best of ways. 

“Were you crying?” Jaebum asks, finally, after seconds of their bodies adjusting to the press of warm water and wet skin. At this, Jinyoung sits up, and though he can still feel the echo of pain in his chest, crying seems like the furthest thing from his mind. 

“Yes,” he says, “I think I was.” 

Jaebum just hums and busies himself with running the washcloth over Jinyoung’s shoulders. Jinyoung’s eyes close, he focuses on the drag of the fabric, how Jaebum scrubs him carefully from the top of his shoulders to the back of his neck, his upper back, and when he’s close to hitting water, he tells Jinyoung to stand up. 

Jinyoung does and Jaebum continues lathering him up. He scrubs down his spine, around the dimples of his back, along his sides. Then he keeps going lower, to his ass, and spends his time there, going in circles, from side to side, up and down, and when Jinyoung thinks he’s done — that there is nothing left to clean on his backside — Jaebum’s other hand meets the washcloth and he feels his cheeks being spread, being studied. Jaebum runs a wet finger along the center, then presses his thumb against Jinyoung’s entrance and he feels chills run up his spine. There’s also an urge to lean back into the touch, to find out what it would be like for fingers not his own to be inside him, especially Jaebum’s: short and fat — blunt little things. Good, he thinks, it would feel good, especially after Jaebum pries his cheeks even more open and he tightens from how cool the air is, how strange it feels to have Jaebum’s thumb playing with him, his nail scraping against his rim. 

But Jaebum lets go, keeps scrubbing down along his thighs, first the back but then the insides, which makes Jinyoung flush. Each swipe gets closer to where his nerves are more sensitive, where each touch sends tiny jolts to his groin. Blood starts rushing southward and when Jaebum pats this thigh, tells him to turn around, Jinyoung is half-hard, embarrassed about it. 

He covers his crotch with his hands but Jaebum pulls them away. He continues cleaning his thighs, running the cloth between them, then higher and higher, from the top of his knee to his upper thigh to, finally, above his groin, under his navel. Jaebum’s free hand comes up again and he holds Jinyoung’s erection with delicate fingers; he cleans the sides, under the balls, and then lets the washcloth fall. 

It hits the water with a little wet smack but Jinyoung is too distracted to notice. All of his nerves follow Jaebum’s fingers where they slide along his cock, make him harder each time. The soap suds make his fingers slip but Jaebum is not interested in getting a firm hold. He seems to prefer petting it, holding it for a few seconds, making it bob up and down when he lets go, feeling it throb, watching the head leak out a tiny bead of cum. 

Jinyoung has never looked much at his cock much before but watching it now, it looks almost pretty with Jaebum’s fingers wrapped around it, his skin pale against the urgent red of his cock; Jaebum’s thumb rubs along the head, making it glossy with come and Jinyoung feels a jolt shoot up with every swipe, but he isn’t sure if it’s all sensation or if it’s the sight of Jaebum’s thumb, his pretty wrist, the rest of his fingers grazing his thighs gently, his balls. 

Then he looks down at Jaebum and his breath escapes him and his knees grow weak and he almost falls because Jaebum is looking up at him with a stern look, as if he’s holding back. His jaw is tight, his eyes serious and focused and they look so dark that it almost scares Jinyoung. And in the same breath of being scared, he is attracted, too, and wants nothing more than to take a step forward and press his cock against Jaebum’s nose — to tap it against the little bump there — and to drag it down over Jaebum’s lips. He wants nothing more than to tell Jaebum to stand up, too, and compare sizes just to have an excuse for their cocks to rub together. He wants nothing more than to squat down and reach into the water to check if Jaebum is as hard as him, and like reading his mind, Jaebum’s expression flickers.

“Sit back down,” he says and picks up the floating washcloth, lays it on the edge of the tub. Jinyoung turns around, slow as Jaebum holds his hips and guides Jinyoung down, settles him not in between Jaebum’s thighs or in front of him, but in his lap. 

It takes a moment to adjust, to stretch his legs as far as he can go, to feel the warmth of water envelop him again. The rest comes in waves: Jaebum’s heartbeat against against his back, Jaebum’s hands sliding over his thighs beneath the water, Jaebum’s cock pressed neatly against his ass. 

Then Jaebum takes his hand away from his thigh and Jinyoung feels it under him and then Jaebum’s cock is moving, sliding along the cleft of his ass. Jaebum pauses there before he pushes forward gently, presses the head against Jinyoung’s hole and he tenses. He’s never had anything in there besides his fingers, and on some days, even this hurts. He panics — his back gets stiff, he shakes his head. 

“No, Jaebum —”

“You don’t want to?” Jaebum asks, rubs his free hand over Jinyoung’s shoulder. 

“I — I’ve never done this.” 

For a second they don’t move; the water stands still, some bubbles near the end of the tub pop. Then Jaebum wraps both arms around Jinyoung, places both hands against his stomach. He puts his cheek against his shoulder and they stay like this, not saying anything, for a long time. By the time they get out of the bath and dry off, their fingers are pruned, their skin smelling of honey-scented soap. 

—

After their bath, they settle into bed with damp hair, Jaebum completely naked and Jinyoung with only underwear. He expects them to sleep on opposite sides but somehow Jinyoung finds himself hugged from behind, Jaebum’s arms tight around his waist, his back against his chest. Their legs tangle loosely and Jinyoung feels almost calm, as if stuck in a dream. The lights are off and the moon spills in from the window and everything is blue and Jinyoung is so tired, he can barely keep his eyes open. 

The night has claimed his energy, his strength. If it wasn’t for Jaebum’s hold, or Jaebum’s fingers drawing quiet shapes into the bones of his hips and around his navel, he feels like he might come apart. But they are both there, and Jinyoung can breath, no matter if for a short time.

And in this comfort he finds his mind becoming looser: his thoughts swirl around and tease his tongue until one slides out. 

“Does this mean we’re dating?” 

Jaebum’s fingers don’t stop drawing, neither of them stop breathing, and even if Jinyoung can’t see him, he can feel Jaebum’s smile. 

“Is that what you want?” 

“You wanted to —  _ you know  _ — with me, isn’t that what people who are dating do?”

“Maybe,” Jaebum says with a breath. Jinyoung feels it on the back of his neck. 

“Are you just using me for sex?” He is not angry, doesn’t accuse; his mind is just loose; his logic flimsy.

“We didn’t have sex.” 

“But you were ready to — am I just a friend with benefits?” 

“You’re my best friend, Jinyoung.” 

“But you wanted to have sex with me. Friends don’t have sex with each other — so you’re using me for sex?” 

“Friends can have sex,” Jaebum says and Jinyoung’s eyes close; Jaebum keeps moving his fingers along his skin and it feels like music there, a tiny symphony made entirely of touch, “Friends can go on dates.” 

“But you don’t want to date me.” 

“I never said that.” 

“Do you want to date me?” 

“Maybe,” Jaebum says, “Do you want to date me?” 

“Maybe,” Jinyoung breathes, “Maybe if you didn’t use me for sex.”

They both laugh at this and Jinyoung feels ecstatic, one foot in the waking world, one foot in sleep — he’s stuck between being here and not here, in Jaebum’s arms and among clouds. Even the laughter does not feel like laughter but little threads of light curling at the bottom of his stomach, coiled, ready to spring loose at any hint of a joke. 

“Like you use me for rides?” 

Jinyoung takes a second to think about this, though thinking now is hard, and he feels dizzy suddenly so he turns and Jaebum’s arms fold and soon they’re looking at each other, gazing into each other’s eyes. Jaebum finds Jinyoung’s face with his hands, resume their drawing into his jaw, his nose, under his eye. 

“Yes,” Jinyoung says and then they say nothing. Time stands still for a few seconds and Jinyoung’s eyelashes feel heavy, as if sleep has clumped in them like bits of dew, but he still has so much to say, so many questions. He is still confused at how he could have been repulsed by Jaebum a few weeks ago and now he melts under his touch, drawn by something he can’t put his finger on, something he can’t grasp. He feels like he’s running into the dark with only Jaebum’s voice to guide him but it feels  _ right _ . It feels like the deeper he gets lost in the shadows, the more his eyes will adjust. 

And as his thoughts jump from one thing to another, his focus too tired to move in a straight line, he asks, “What happened the night of the concert?” 

He is sleepy, yes, but he notices how Jaebum’s fingers pause immediately; he can still feel them, warm against his cheeks, his thumb against the corner of his mouth but they don’t move. Jaebum’s jaw tenses, extends. 

“Do you really want to know?” he answers after what feels like hours. 

“Yes,” Jinyoung sighs, noticing how nicely Jaebum’s eyes glimmer in the dark, how nicely they catch the light coming in from outside. 

“Okay,” Jaebum says, “But close your eyes.”

“Why?” 

Jaebum’s thumb brushes under his bottom lip and presses down until Jinyoung’s mouth hangs open slightly. He tries to smile, but his lips are confused and after a second he closes his eyes — would have closed on their own anyways. He wonders if he’ll even be awake to hear it but he’s proud to have asked. 

“Where should I start?”

“After you abandoned me,” Jinyoung says, still trying to smile, “After you left me to die.” 

“After I left you in the safety of my car I went inside looking for weed. I can’t sleep without it, and when I don’t sleep I think too much. So much, and so quick.

“There’s a lot I don’t like thinking about and sometimes it feels like they ambush me at night. It’s the worst feeling, Jinyoung, to be scared of your own thoughts — you can’t even get away from them. They’re always there in the back of your head, it’s like they’re laughing at you. So I smoke, and I needed to smoke that night because I was  _ happy _ . Isn’t that funny? It’s always worse after I’m happy, after I spend time with someone I like — after I spend time with  _ you _ , Jinyoung.”

Jinyoung hums, tries to make sense of Jaebum’s words. Vaguely he feels his heartbeat start to race, guilt starting to form. 

“I knew you’d win, and I knew you’d be happy after. That makes me happy — you never tell me anything anymore, but when you smile, Jinyoung, and you get those little whiskers next to your eyes, I can tell you’re actually happy. I don’t need you to tell me. I like that a lot,” Jaebum pauses then sighs, sounds frustrated, “I knew it would be bad, I should have been ready — I’m sorry.”

Jinyoung’s eyebrows furrow and he lifts his fingers to Jaebum’s lips but he must have missed because the next thing he knows, Jaebum is holding his wrists and he's kissing Jinyoung’s knuckles, his fingers, palms of his hands. Then he threads their fingers together and Jaebum holds his hands. They feel hotter than usual and Jinyoung tries to pull away but his arms have stopped responding. He is too sleepy, too tired, so he adjusts instead to the heat; to the touch; to Jaebum’s whispers settling in his ears. 

“And so I asked around and nobody seemed to have any. I was pissed — what kind of concert is that? But then someone said they’d find out for me, to meet them in the bathroom in a few minutes so I went outside to tell you to wait but the car was empty. I thought maybe you went inside to use the bathroom and I thought, how perfect, you know? But you weren’t in the bathroom either and when I stepped outside the guy was there,” he pauses again, swallowing loudly this time, “He wasn’t alone. 

“There were four of them, two with ski masks, one with blue hair, another had dark, curly hair. He looked nervous and that’s when I realized something was wrong. So I told them to forget it — I tried to leave but the one with curly hair grabbed me by the arm and then all of them were on me. I tried to struggle but they kept punching me and one of them put a bag over my head and I kept yelling but the concert was so loud and nobody was stopping them. They dragged me on the floor then picked me up and it felt like hours without seeing anything and then they pulled off my clothes. They ripped them off — I could feel the fabric tearing — my jeans, my shirt, even my underwear and then finally it all stopped.

“They pulled the bag off my head and I was in some room and there were candles and guys all around me just walking around holding these big curved knives. I started crying, Jinyoung, I was so sure I was going to die. My hands and feet were tied and I was naked lying on a cement floor and everything was cold, so, so cold and the candles made it hard to see but I could tell everyone was looking at me. And all the while, my mind is racing and my thoughts kept coming back to  _ you _ .

“I thought of you waiting outside, I knew you were mad and now you were going to be even more mad and I didn’t want that, Jinyoung, I was so scared, of the room and the men and how they dragged their knives along the floor near my ears so I could hear them screech, but I was most scared of you being mad at me. I thought this was it, you were never going to talk to me again and I felt so  _ alone _ . Thinking about you leaving me — thinking about everyone just walking away. 

“I started crying even more. And as I’m sobbing, one of the guys tells me to stop crying or he’d cut me and I start crying more, asking to be let out, please,  _ please _ let me out, I’m trying to scream but everything gets so wet in my throat and it feels like I’m choking and this guy, he takes his knife and he points it at me and says, keep crying, watch, and I just can’t stop, it just comes running out and he squats down in front of my head and he cuts me, Jinyoung, two little crosses on my forehead and —” 

Jinyoung’s heart, now, is racing. He can’t open his eyes — he can’t bear the thought of seeing Jaebum now, not as his breaths turn shallow, as if he’s reliving the moment; as if he’s trying not to cry there, on Jinyoung’s bed, in front of the best friend that abandoned him long before the concert. But he settles for squeezing Jaebum’s hands, for letting him know he’s there.

“Jinyoung, they thought it was funny — they cut me for  _ fun. _ Another guy cut right under my cheek and I’m laying there, too exhausted to cry anymore. I open my mouth and no sound comes out and I can feel the blood dripping down my cheeks and over my eyebrow and I know I’m going to die so I keep staring at the ceiling. There are so many footsteps all around me and they echo and then they start chanting and I keep staring at the ceiling and crying, but there are no more tears, Jinyoung, it’s just my chest shaking like I’m heaving and I’m trying to think of anything else, I want to think of happy things but there is nothing — they start chanting even louder and one of them starts screaming and another falls on the ground and another starts walking, kicks my legs open. 

“He steps between them and I don’t want to look down but there is so much chanting and I don’t feel anything at all but I can hear this wet sound and I can feel something cold and then his knife bounces on the floor and that’s when I look down and I see this man bent over me. He looks up and he has your face, Jinyoung. Your eyes, your nose, your lips, your smile — down to the whiskers on his eyes — and he’s grinning at me like he’s happy to see me and then he lifts something dark up in his hands and it’s shiny, even in the candlelight. It keeps leaking and it’s connected to something and I follow it down and I see where my stomach is cut open.” 

Jaebum’s voice is just a whisper now, closer to a gasp, and he sounds out of breath, like he’s running, and Jinyoung swallows the lump in his throat and his back stiffens, his heart pounds against his chest. He tries to breath but his entire body stiffens when Jaebum lets go of one of his hands to drag a finger across Jinyoung’s bare stomach, two lines that cross at his navel. 

“They had me open, Jinyoung, and I can see this guy holding my insides and I go back to staring at the ceiling and I lay there and I wait to die. And I hope I die soon because I can hear blood falling on the ground and something wet bouncing off it, and I look at him again, just once, just a glimpse, and he has my father’s face and I start crying again. But there is no sound anymore, just chanting in my ear, and even that gets distant and I can hear nothing but this ringing in the air and on the roof there is smoke, black smoke that curls around and starts to swirl and it looks like a tornado gathering and I stare at that, hoping this all ends soon and then I realize I don’t feel cold anymore — I’m no longer on the ground, I’m floating up slowly.” 

Even if he tries to fight it, Jinyoung can picture the scene — not the entire room, but Jaebum’s face: his face bleeding from cuts on his forehead, on his cheeks, the lines of grime from crying, everything lit by candles and he can see the flat hair from his hat, all messed up, sweaty and soaked in blood and sticking up at random places. He can see him crying, his twisted mouth, wrinkled forehead. Most of all, he can see the ground sinking beneath him as he floats, his hair suddenly pointed downwards, a few drops of blood racing behind him to splatter against the cement. 

“And then that smoke starts to glow and it keeps swirling and I can see it going towards my lips so I clamp them shut and it touches them and it burns and I’m trying so hard to keep my mouth closed but it feels like there are fingers prying my lips open, scratching at my lips and trying to tear into it.” 

He sees the smoke, too, glowing, but it isn’t the smoke itself but its reflection against Jaebum’s eyes — they’re wide open, perfect mirrors, and he looks so  _ scared  _ that Jinyoung’s heart hurts at the image, at the thought, and in the black of his eyes he sees the smoke swirling and swirling and behind him, on the cement floor, he can see the splatter of blood and the clean outline of Jaebum’s body.

And then he sees the cuts on his lip start to form like someone is clawing their way into his mouth and finally his lips give up and Jaebum’s voice sounds like he’s yelling. 

“And they finally get it open and it feels like a fist made of hot coals gets shoved into me and in the distance I can hear people screaming and I hear a pig squealing and I can smell smoke but nothing matters because this light is filling me and it’s  _ burning  _ but it burns so sweetly, Jinyoung, like I  _ want  _ to get burnt and I want to be used and suddenly I can no longer hear anything, or see anything, or feel anything.” 

There’s silence after that, and Jinyoung is close to whimpering. He realizes he’s sweating and that his hands are shaking and that his lip quivers and he barely manages to ask, “And then?” 

“Then I woke up a god,” Jaebum says, but his voice no longer sounds like his own, it sounds wicked — two voices braided into one. Before Jinyoung can open his eyes, he falls asleep.

—

He wakes up to nibbling between his thighs. He keeps his eyes pressed shut, but he feels Jaebum’s nose dragging from the inside of his knee to the inside of his thigh. Then his tongue slides over the skin, warm, wet, then he nibbles on the spot and it sends flutters up his leg, up his spine, and Jinyoung giggles. 

“Jaebum,” he whispers and he feels hard already, wonders when he took off his underwear. He keeps his eyes closed, focuses on the sensation of Jaebum’s tiny bites, leading up higher and higher, now at his mid-thigh, now closer to his groin, to the space where his legs meet his hips. The top of Jaebum's head brushes up against his balls and cock and it makes Jinyoung whine. He starts to squirm, tries to run his fingers through Jaebum’s hair but his hands won’t move — Jaebum has them pinned down at his sides. 

He thinks: this is kinky. He thinks: this feels heavenly. He thinks: Jaebum’s bites sting but they feel good, and he hopes they don’t stop. And they don’t. In fact, they keep going, harsher each time, until Jinyoung no longer squirms in pleasure but in pain. It feels like little pinches at first, Jaebum taking a piece of his skin between his teeth, making it bruise, making it purple, but then Jaebum takes bigger and bigger bites and Jinyoung is sure there are teeth marks on his thighs. 

“Jaebum—” his voice cuts off in a gasp when Jaebum takes a bigger bite and it burns. His eyes fly open and he looks down, between his legs — Jaebum has blood on his lips, on his grin, and then he opens his mouth and his teeth are as sharp as fangs and a robotic beeping streams out. 

Jinyoung almost falls off his bed trying to turn off the alarm, and then he lays in bed catching his breath, alone, Jaebum already gone. The sun spills in from outside and warms him, though, and he floats into a haze that lasts all weekend, as if no matter how much he tries, no matter how many showers he takes, how much homework he does, he feels as if he's just stepped out of a dream. Even when the day is as normal as can be — here is his breakfast, there is his mother coming home. Here is his backpack, there are his shoes. 

No sign of Jaebum remains, but no sign has to remain; he stays on his mind with a light sting, like a sunburn that won’t heal. He does not call him, he does not look for him. Jaebum has given him enough to think about and he spends the last day of the weekend doing just that, not outright, but in the back of his head. He heats some water for tea and he thinks of the fire, he takes a shower and he thinks of Jaebum’s thumb slipping inside him; at night he thinks of his story, and when he wakes up on Monday, he thinks of the nightmare. 

At school, where he expects to find the usual bustle, he finds silence. There is a group outside holding hands, their heads hanging. Only one head is raised, Mina’s, the captain of the cheerleading squad. Even from across the parking lot, Jinyoung feels like her eyes are watching him, though he figures it’s the paranoia creeping up. 

When lunch comes around, Jinyoung has a few questions. 

“What was up with this morning? Everyone was outside holding hands.”

“They were praying,” Youngjae answers, distracted, “They’ve given up on Jackson coming back.” 

They eat in silence after that, Bambam reading a book, Youngjae looking off into space. Wonpil and Jae are still preparing, it seems, and Jaebum is nowhere to be seen. He doubts he came to school, he would have felt him otherwise — he feels connected to him that way. As if they are linked, permanently. 

And as he thinks of Jaebum, he unfolds his mother’s note. Today’s: “Don’t be afraid to fail, be afraid to try.” 

He can feel the question in his throat, enhanced by the silence surrounding the ouija board; the roaming planchette; Jaebum appearing at just the right moment. Youngjae will never mention it, and if Youngjae doesn’t mention it, Bambam won’t either, so it’s up to Jinyoung. He looks at the note, looks up at his friends who still avoid his gaze, and says, finally, “What do you two know about possessions?” 

Youngjae doesn’t look his way, but he stops chewing. His eyebrows furrow and Bambam grows nervous next to him; his back stiffens; he plays with his fingers. 

“Other than your boyfriend might positively be possessed and also linked to recent murders and a fire?” he asks and Jinyoung glares, defensive, until Youngjae sighs and continues, “We might have done some more research — but after that whole ouija thing, we kind of stopped. We don’t want to get involved, you know, in things that might hurt us.” 

Jinyoung thinks about this, plays with the edges of the paper bag that holds his lunch. He realizes now that this isn’t happening to just him: it’s happening to everyone. Jackson is gone, people are mourning; the fire killed enough people to warrant a tragedy; even the murders themselves shifted the undercurrent of the town. It isn’t just him being paranoid, it’s the air, the static, the whole town is slipping quietly and cleanly into despair. And that includes his friends, too. 

“You’re right,” Jinyoung says, “Better not to dig up any trouble.” 

Youngjae nods, but doesn’t look convinced. He looks to either side of him and leans in; Bambam does the same. 

“We can point you in the right direction, though. We found some things that match up — let’s go to the library. Now.” 

They spend the rest of their lunch stacking books as quietly as they can on a table. Each has an occult sign on the front, some are frauds, some are self-help books, one is entirely composed of recipes to have the hot neighbor fall in love with you, but Youngjae sifts through them and pulls out the ones he knows. 

“We were looking at rituals,” he says, Jinyoung at his side, Bambam leaning over the table and watching, “And some of them matched up with what happened.”

Youngjae’s fingers move with expertise, already familiar with how many pages are in each book, in what chapter to look, which pictures to highlight. But as quick as his fingers go, they stop just as rapidly, except he doesn’t point at a picture, doesn’t point out a chapter title. Instead he runs his finger down the middle of the book.

“They’re gone,” he says, his voice just above a whisper and Jinyoung leans closer and notices the rough edges of torn out paper. An entire chapter has been ripped out, it seems, page by page. Bambam hands Youngjae the second book and they go through the same process with the same results. Each time Youngjae opens his mouth to point something out — to explain, perhaps, where they fell into a certain ritual’s timeline — his words are left forgotten in his throat and he touches, instead, where the pages have been torn. Each book is the same, always the chapter about rituals, always about possessions. 

“They were here before,” Youngjae says and his voice cracks and Jinyoung notices how teary-eyed he looks — tired, mostly, “We — we saw them and — Bambam, remember?” 

Bambam is nodding, but Bambam is crying, too, and they both look so scared that Jinyoung shakes his head. 

“I’m sorry for asking,” he says, “I can handle it from here. I’ll do my own research — thank you.” 

The bell rings, marks the beginning of class but Youngjae doesn’t move. He sits at the table, shaking his head. 

“No,” he says, finally, “We’re your best friends, Jinyoung. We’ll look into it, too. At the city library.” 

Something about this warms Jinyoung; despite the air of mistrust, he feels safe with Youngjae and Bambam who nods furiously. Even if he feels alone — and even if he can’t share the details of his weekend that would, no doubt, distance his friends — he is glad they are there with him, at least for now. He has the feeling that his will change at some point; that if things keep escalating, he might be the one to step back, to save people the trouble. 

He might be the reason they get hurt. 

So, instead of worrying them, he smiles, leans forward, rests a hand on both of their shoulders and gives them a squeeze. 

“Thank you guys — let me know if you find anything. I’m glad I have you guys.” 

“Of course,” Bambam chirps, smiling now, despite the fear that remains in his eyes; fragmented like glass; scattered across their lovely black color, “We’re like family. We have your back. We can go Wednesday.” 

“We’ll stick together — safety in numbers,” Youngjae adds.

Jinyoung smiles as the second bell rings, telling them they’re late to class. 

—

Jinyoung anticipates Wednesday, but before Wednesday is Tuesday, and on Tuesday, he sees Wonpil after what seems like weeks. It’s just in passing at first in the hallway and Wonpil hands him a smile. 

“Don’t forget we’re meeting after school,” he tells him, places his hand on Jinyoung’s arm as he passes and Jinyoung still feels flutters, but with the tension of the days, they appear dull, as if felt through a blanket of anxiety. 

After school, Wonpil doesn’t find him, and for a second Jinyoung feels stood up. He waits by his locker for ten minutes before he starts wandering. Wonpil isn’t at his locker, or by Jinyoung’s, or even by Jae’s, and as the hallways start clearing out, Jinyoung looks for the math room the debate club meets in. 

He hears Wonpil before he sees him, much louder than usual, angrier than Jinyoung even thought was possible. He’s yelling, and then there are thumps that sound like fists against a desk. Jinyoung approaches with care, tries to peek in through the tiny window on the door but all he sees is Wonpil’s back and Jae cowering in front of him, ready to cry. One of Jae’s eyes looks red and bruised and then he looks up and sees Jinyoung. They make eye contact and Jinyoung smiles — Jae doesn’t smile back. 

Jae points at Jinyoung and Wonpil turns around, and though he doesn’t smile immediately — almost looks pained to see Jinyoung there — he musters one up as he walks to the door. 

“Jinyoung,” he says, sounds out of breath. Instead of letting Jinyoung inside, he steps out, closes the door behind him. Over his shoulder, Jinyoung peeks back inside and Jae is now crying, leaning against the wall. 

“Is everything alright?” he asks, but this sounds too nosy, not an attractive look so Jinyoung adds, nervously, “I didn’t see you at my locker.”

“Sorry — there was some trouble — do you mind if Jae rides with us in the car?” 

For a brief moment, Jinyoung imagines that this trouble is Jae needing a ride — that Wonpil is swept up in anger because he has to share Jinyoung’s time with a third party — but no matter how he looks at it, from any angle, he can’t find the romance. Instead he grows nervous, folds his arms across his chest, wonders how much he really knows about Wonpil. 

“Sure,” Jinyoung says, “I don’t mind.” 

“Good — sorry about all of this, we’re really stressed out. We’re not as prepared as we want to be.” 

Jinyoung accepts this explanation with a smile, though it feels forced. Wonpil goes back inside and Jinyoung waits. After a few minutes both him and Jae step outside, looking like their usual selves, and Jae even smiles in his direction and all this nervous energy starts to unravel slowly. 

They all ride in Wonpil’s minivan, though it isn’t his minivan, it’s his mom’s: the seats have flower-print covers and a baseball player’s bobblehead bounces when they drive on the road and there are three bumper stickers about having an honor roll student as a son. Jinyoung sits in the back as Jae and Wonpil go over certain strategies and test each other on different topics. From time to time Wonpil finds Jinyoung’s gaze in the rearview mirror and they share a smile and he asks Jinyoung how he’s doing and each time Jinyoung says he’s doing  _ great _ . Because he is — he likes this: the normalcy, the flexing of academic prowess, finding Wonpil’s eyes and feeling warm flutters in his stomach. 

He enjoys the competition, too. Wonpil on the debate team is so different from who he is in the hallways: competing, he has a sharp tongue, quick wit, relentless in his destruction of another team’s logic. Jae, surprisingly, is just as cunning, and along with Momo and Yugyeom, they easily ride towards victory. Jinyoung, in the stands, one of the ten in the audience, feels electrified — claps the loudest when Wonpil’s team wins, and when they find each other in the lobby of the building, Jinyoung pulls him into a hug.

“You did great,” he says and Wonpil rubs his hands against Jinyoung’s back and everything, for a moment, is perfect, down to Jae smiling behind Wonpil and Momo and Yugyeom laughing and the yellowed lights and the quiet murmur of people existing, not in this room but elsewhere, as if they are in a separate, tiny world. Then Wonpil pulls away and they spend a moment smiling at each other, sharing a look, and Jinyoung feels himself transported away from horror into a sweet kind of ignorance. 

“Thanks,” Wonpil says, finally, but the spell is not broken; Jinyoung still feels light as light as balloons, “Yugyeom’s going to a party right now and invited us — want to come?” 

Jinyoung, usually, detests parties, and the only time he’s ever drank beer is with Bambam and Youngjae, and that had ended in him puking, but Wonpil is holding both of his hands and he’s looking at Jinyoung like he’s magic — like he’s trying to figure something out — and a little voice at the back of Jinyoung’s head says ‘jump’ so he does. 

“Sure,” he says, “I’d love to.” 

And even if he might die at a party, accosted by a demon, cut open like his best friend, it will have all been worth it just to see Wonpil’s smile unfold like a careful creature learning to walk, his lips spreading, his cheeks rising up, his eyes thinning and that squeeze on his hands. Jinyoung decides he is in love, madly so, and when he finds himself back in the car — in the front seat this time — he cannot wait to arrive at the party. 

Until he does. 

The bass of the music is felt outside, almost from a block away. The beat stumbles into his chest and he wishes he could go home, but every time he looks to his left, at Wonpil, he’s reminded of why he’s here, why he can weather a house full of drunk, loud, obnoxious teenagers. Wonpil doesn’t take his hand, doesn’t escort him inside, but he doesn’t need to when Jinyoung feels out of place enough to press against his side, shoulder to shoulder, elbows bumping with each step. 

“How long are we going to stay?” Jinyoung asks and Wonpil shrugs.

“However long you want to.” 

He wishes they could leave now, especially when Jae opens the door and someone stumbles outside, too drunk to notice their shoe gets left behind inside. Jinyoung steps over the sneaker and inside and the house is not as packed as he’d feared, and he finds that there is room to breathe, to move, and for a second, he's hopeful. Then Wonpil taps on his shoulder. 

“Let’s get a drink,” he says before they part with Jae to find the kitchen. Inside, two girls are talking too loudly, close to yelling, but after a second they leave and Wonpil and Jinyoung are left by themselves to figure out how to mix drinks. Wonpil mixes it for them, puts too much alcohol, too little soda, a random squirt of lime, but Jinyoung doesn’t complain. He takes a sip, fights the urge to wrinkle his nose and cringe.

“These are strong,” Jinyoung says. 

Wonpil shrugs, then sets his cup on the counter. 

“I have to use the bathroom real quick — I think there might be one upstairs. You coming?” 

“Like,  _ inside  _ the bathroom with you?” 

“No — no, you can wait outside.” 

Jinyoung takes another sip, longer this time, so Wonpil doesn’t notice how he’s blushing. Wonpil, though, in his infinite chivalry, doesn’t point anything out. He simply wears that smile that bathes everything in a positive light: the girl by the stairs isn’t puking, she’s detoxing, and the guy who slides down the staircase is just testing a physics hypothesis. Jinyoung is not following Wonpil to the bathroom, he’s escorting him, protecting him, like a knight to his prince. 

Upstairs, the house isn’t as cluttered with sounds. The party sounds as if it were happening a mile away, so Jinyoung doesn’t hear any specifics — shouts lose their shape when they sliver up the stairs and the music pulses and beats but is formless. Jinyoung feels the party under his feet but another sound creeps into his ear. At first it sounds inhuman, like a door creaking, or the walls settling, or even the air swirling around him. Wonpil is in the bathroom but the sound comes from elsewhere, gets louder and clearer as Jinyoung starts paying attention, as if it was only waiting to be noticed, waiting to be followed.

Jinyoung, drink still in hand, starts to walk towards it, maybe out of curiosity, or maybe out of a need to help someone — the sound is human, he notices, and belongs to someone in pain. They’re crying, maybe mewling, maybe screaming, maybe each of these things all at once and it urges Jinyoung forward. His steps are slow on the carpet, as if any sudden movement might put that person in danger, more than they seem to be. Then they stop altogether — Jinyoung’s blood goes cold, his bones stiffen. The scream is no longer an abstract thump in his ears, but it comes with words, clear and sharp.

“Jaebum — it hurts —” 

For a second he thinks it’s  _ his  _ Jaebum, and that voice sounds familiar, too familiar to be a coincidence. But what would Jaebum be doing here, at this party, in this room at the end of the hallway? It feels too complex to be true, so he shakes the thought from his head, keeps stepping forward until he notices the door is cracked open. There are no more words to be heard, only a high-pitched cry that wavers in the air like a flag whipped by the wind; as if the scream, unsure of where it should go, tries to be everywhere at once. 

He pauses at the doorway, notices that it isn’t just a scream but the creak of a bed, the chant of panting breaths, the beat of a headboard ramming itself into a wall. He doesn’t step inside the room, though, because he doesn't have to. He sees Mark on the bed, his figure folded neatly in half with his legs held open by the ankles. He looks pained and flushed and his eyes are shut tight and pounding into him is Jaebum — his body now intimately familiar — and Jinyoung is stunned. He isn’t sure why he feels like crying, suddenly, or why his chest tightens, why his stomach sinks. He isn’t sure why he feels the urge to step inside and yell and break them up and slap Jaebum and fight Mark, but he feels it in his entire body; sadness makes his bones heavy, anger makes his heart race. 

And he stands there, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to do anything but remain in place as Jaebum stops moving and gets on his back and Mark unfolds himself and straddles his hips and looks up to catch Jinyoung’s eyes. 

“You want a turn?” Mark yells and before Jaebum can look to the doorway, Jinyoung is running back towards the bathroom. Over the sounds of the party downstairs, he can hear Mark’s laughter, chiming in the air like bells. He hears it even after Wonpil gets out of the bathroom and they go back downstairs. He hears it until he downs his drink and heads to the kitchen for another. He doesn’t bother with soda or mixers or anything that might lighten the sting of alcohol running down his throat. 

He drinks until his stomach is warm, drinks until the air is hazy, until the music is warped and sounds nice in his ears. He drinks until he can’t stand still for too long, until he can’t find a bottle to refill his cup with, until he has to take Wonpil’s cup and drink that.

“Jinyoung,” Wonpil says, both sitting on the sofa in the living room, “Maybe you shouldn’t drink anymore. Your mom might notice you’ve been drinking.” 

Jinyoung, already drunk, yells, “I’m not even tipsy!”

He tries to stand up and go back to the kitchen and this time Wonpil follows him and holds his arms so he doesn’t fall and helps him lean against the counter. Jinyoung peers in the corner of the room, frowning, and it takes him a minute to notice that Wonpil is staring at him. 

His tongue is drunk as him and his words stick together, come out strung together like a necklace, “Wonpil, do you think I’m cute?”

Wonpil blinks, surprised at the question, but then he smiles, though it doesn’t erase the look of worry in his eyes; the furrow of his brow; the wrinkled forehead. 

“Of course, Jinyoung, I think you’re very cute.” 

Jinyoung sighs dramatically, “I think you’re cute, too.” 

And he grins obnoxiously, feels his cheeks take over his entire face. His eyes close and he tilts his head back, still smiling, suddenly floating like someone in love, and he  _ is  _ in love — with Wonpil, with a boy who takes him to a party and doesn’t judge him for drinking, a boy who just won a debate competition, a boy he wants to kiss more than anyone else in the world. He opens his eyes and finds Wonpil’s and he stares with an open mouth, with wonder and awe that someone like Wonpil could exist. Sweet Wonpil — handsome Wonpil —  _ smart  _ Wonpil. Because Wonpil doesn’t kiss him then fucks someone else, and he definitely isn’t possessed, and he smells nice, though this last part he can’t confirm, only imagines. 

“Kiss me,” he hears himself say and Wonpil opens his mouth to speak, but no words come out. His lips seem hesitant, unsure, so Jinyoung reaches forward and takes his hand and pulls until there is no space between them. 

Their teeth bump into one another and their lips don’t move quite right and Jinyoung’s tongue is as drunk as he and can’t seem to find Wonpil’s but Jinyoung would rate it the best kiss he’s ever had because it’s a kiss with  _ Wonpil _ . And they don’t stop kissing — Wonpil is surprisingly skilled, smooths out the kinks in their technique pretty quickly until Jinyoung is flushed and dizzy with affection. 

They pull apart to breath and gaze at one another and Wonpil looks like another person: his eyes look hungry, his lips are swollen, wet and glistening in this dim kitchen, and his cheeks are a deep red. 

“Wonpil,” Jinyoung breathes and pulls him in again, and this time Wonpil props him up on the counter and Jinyoung’s back arches and he wraps an arm around Wonpil’s neck, and with his free hand he searches for Wonpil’s wrist so he can guide Wonpil's fingers to his groin. It takes a few seconds and even when Jinyoung puts it there, Wonpil doesn’t grab, doesn’t squeeze, doesn’t palm him, instead he lets his hand rest there, over the curve of Jinyoung’s jeans, over the growing bulge and this excites Jinyoung. This makes him think that Wonpil goes slow, that Wonpil can kiss him today and tomorrow and not expect to fuck on the first date, and when he kisses him, he doesn’t even think of Jaebum anymore — he thinks of nothing. The kiss wipes away his thoughts, leaves his mind empty except for the tiny flickers of pleasure that whirl around in there, like specks of dust caught in the light. 

He doesn’t see Jaebum go downstairs, alone, and he doesn't see him step into the kitchen. Doesn’t notice him there, staring, his own lips open in shock, and Jinyoung doesn’t notice when his eyes turn to anger, when he rushes to the other side of the kitchen and pulls Wonpil away from him by a fistful of air. 

One moment he’s kissing Wonpil, his hand on Jinyoung's crotch, his thighs spread open and ready and the next he’s kissing air — his tongue is still out, his eyes still closed, his arms stuck in the air, one hand lowered down in a grip where he’d gotten brave and started feeling up Wonpil’s ass.

His eyes open and he sees Jaebum and Wonpil, staring at each other, looking ready to fight and he slides off the counter and jumps between them. 

“Get the fuck off of him!” Jaebum is yelling, but Wonpil just shakes his head. 

“Jaebum — mind your business,” Jinyoung lifts a finger to jab at Jaebum’s chest but he misses and has to grip his shoulder so he doesn’t fall. Immediately, Jaebum grabs his elbow and he looks mad, madder than Jinyoung has ever seen him. His jaw is tense, his eyebrows pulled down — he almost looks like a cartoon and this makes Jinyoung giggle. 

“You’re drunk, Jinyoung.” Jaebum breathes out of his flared nostrils like an angry bull and this only makes Jinyoung laugh more, which makes Jaebum tighten his fingers around his elbow. “I’m taking you home.” 

Jinyoung pulls away and sticks out his tongue and makes the precarious trip over to Wonpil, two steps away. He hangs on to Wonpil’s arm, leans his entire weight against him. 

“I’m not going anywhere with _you_ — Wonpil is taking me home.” 

“Jinyoung, please...” 

Jaebum looks mad and Jinyoung sees a little glint in his eyes but he’s too drunk to recognize it, too drunk to care. He turns his head and starts dragging Wonpil towards the door, but halfway Wonpil has to turn him around — Jinyoung was headed in the wrong direction. He doesn’t even bother to look back at Jaebum, the only thing running through his mind is Wonpil and the singular thought: he’s going to fuck Wonpil in the minivan. 

—

What happens, instead, is Jinyoung apologizes for ten minutes and tries not to cry and Wonpil keeps saying it’s fine but Jinyoung doesn’t believe him, not until he reaches over and takes Jinyoung’s chin between his fingers and gives him a chaste little kiss.

Jinyoung by now is more sober, at least enough to recognize the feeling behind this, alert enough to know how his heartbeat quickens and his lungs are suddenly tickled by tiny flutters of emotion. He thinks to laugh, thinks to scream, but all he does is smile stupidly in the passenger seat as Wonpil takes him home. After a few minutes of silence, he speaks up again. 

“Seriously, Wonpil — I’m sorry Jaebum hurt you and I’m sorry I kept drinking and that I’m still tipsy and that I kissed you and —”

“It’s fine,” Wonpil starts, turns to look at Jinyoung, “Kissing you is fun.” 

And it’s these four words that shut Jinyoung up for good as he sobers up in his seat and curls up and looks out at the road, tries to find stars in the sky but tonight they seem to be hiding. Instead he studies the road, how it curves and bends, how the streetlights flood it in light. But they get closer and closer to the forest and Jinyoung gets confused — his house is nowhere near here — but then he understands: Wonpil is taking the scenic route.

So he reaches over and takes one of Wonpil’s hands and holds it and tries not to giggle like the schoolboy he feels like he is. All this years of fantasizing this kiss with Wonpil, then having it happen more than once, leaves him blushing and ecstatic and drowning in a warm pool of glowing bliss. Everything is perfect for a second: the road, the rumble of the car, Wonpil’s sweaty palm, his messy hair, his debate team polo. 

The street lights become less frequent and there are longer stretches of dark road, lit only by the headlights on the minivan. And the darker it is outside, the more the stars peek out and glimmer and Jinyoung is so busy looking at them, swooning at the sight of them, that he almost misses Jackson in the road. 

At first he thinks it’s a deer moving on wobbly legs, a deer with a short neck, with ears that have been cut off, a deer with no tail, a deer with fur the color of skin but Wonpil goes faster and he sees that it isn’t a deer. It has hands, arms, feet, human knees that bend, a back that looks painfully curved, and wide eyes that glow with the beam of the headlights.

He only knows it’s Jackson after they hit him and he bounces over the car and his face hits the windshield and Jinyoung sees the unmistakable lips, the nose, the curve of his eyes — even the ears look painfully familiar. He doesn’t know when he started screaming, only knows that he continues to scream, even after Wonpil stops the car and Jackson’s body rolls along the road behind them. Jinyoung can see him in the rearview mirror: Jackson’s body bathed in the red of the lights, fighting to stand up, his torso trembling and naked. 

“Jinyoung — what’s wrong?” 

Jinyoung tries to make words but now confusion emerges and his voice wades in his throat, fills it like water, and sounds spill out, but never any words. He tries to point back, tries to explain with his hands what his tongue refuses to admit. 

“Back there? What — what about back there?” 

He shakes his head but Wonpil looks frustrated so he puts the minivan in reverse and drives back and hits Jackson a second time. By now, Jinyoung is silent: his lips are pulled around a scream, but nothing comes out. He sits there, quiet, his eyes wide, his cheeks wet with tears, his heart racing with fear. 

“What about back here?” Wonpil asks again and Jinyoung shakes his head, looks at the windshield to see if he’d imagined it but the glass is still broken, and in the center of the web he can see blood in the cracks. 

“You — you — on the road —” He can’t put together a complete sentence and Wonpil looks at him with pity, with worry again. 

“I think you’re still a little drunk,” Wonpil says and Jinyoung shakes his head, suddenly cold with fear. He knows his mind isn't making it up — his imagination has never been good, much less vivid — but the way Wonpil looks at him as if he's crazy, and the fact that it was Jackson, the boy everyone thought was dead, has him questioning everything. His mind is pulled in different directions and an array of emotions start to tumble inside of him, each banging a different body part, a different thought, so that Jinyoung feels it all at once. He is rattled, he is stunned, but mostly, he is defeated.

Maybe Wonpil is right, he thinks, maybe he  _is_ drunk and this is the only reality he can hope to cling to and keep his sanity. Maybe he's been hallucinating the entire thing: the pig, Jaebum, the panicked look on his friends. Maybe, he thinks. 

Maybe, he hopes. 

He does not say anything when Wonpil puts his hand on his thigh, does not say anything for the rest of the drive, does not say anything even when Wonpil’s minivan slows to park in front of his house. 

Wonpil smiles and leans over to kiss Jinyoung one final time and Jinyoung can’t even pretend to close his eyes and his lips hang open, still in shock and he steps outside of the car with care.

“Take care — drink some water,” Wonpil says and waves and drives off and Jinyoung, sluggish now, drags his feet to the front of his house, pulls out his key, steps inside, all while replaying the accident in his head: Jackson naked and crawling out from the forest onto the road, Jackson’s eyes getting wider and wider as the car approached, Wonpil speeding up, Jackson’s face smashed against the windshield, his eyes still torn open, his nose leaving a splatter of blood behind, the broken glass colored with it. He sees Jackson’s body lit up in reds and sees it getting smaller in the rearview mirror after the second hit, no longer trembling, no longer struggling, only a pile of limbs laying completely still. 

Inside the house, his mother is on the couch. She looks worried, pained, and when Jinyoung says hello, his mother points to the television. 

“Look,” she whispers loudly, sounds terrified, and Jinyoung sees the news broadcast. 

Someone has stepped forward and named the person who started the fire, it seems, and after they show footage of the burning buildings, they flash the police drawing of the suspect. Jinyoung shakes his head, but he doesn’t scream — he is too numb to react. He only stares at the television and waits to wake up from this nightmare since the drawn face on the screen is…

* * *

 

CHOICES: 

**A:** NAYEON'S  
 **B:** BAMBAM'S  
 **C:** YOUNGJAE'S  
 **D:**  JINYOUNG'S


	5. ladies .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another long chapter with like a rushed ending maybe that's my brand,,,, also thanks for commenting everyone i rly love reading the theories love ya'll :**

The drawing identical to Nayeon, as if someone has drawn it from a picture or has memorized every detail, from her nose to the shape of her eye to her ears, in preparation for the sketch. Jinyoung stands there, stunned into silence, into stillness. His fingers no longer tremble, his lip no longer quivers. He sees Nayeon and he's sure, suddenly, that she is involved in some way, that maybe her and her boyfriend had planned it all: the fire, the sacrifice, the possession of Jaebum's body. But another part of him, the part that's known Nayeon for years, that’s watched her grow up from a timid child to a loud teenager, her laughter swelling into thunder, doubts she could be involved. She's always been so kind, so thoughtful. She's always been observant. 

Though he remembers her last words: be careful. Careful of what?

Just as quick as the spell arrives, it leaves. The screen flashes back to a scene of the fire, then to a newscaster, then on to the next bit of news and in this time, Jinyoung sprints into the kitchen, finds their phone. His fingers, frantic and clumsy, mess up Youngjae's number three times, but by the fourth he hears the ringing, and by the second ring, Youngjae is yelling in his ear. 

"I'm picking Bambam up first, I'll be right there!" 

Then he's sprinting back to the door, pausing only when his mother asks where he's going. 

"That's Nayeon — Youngjae and Bambam — we have to know —" 

He expects anger, her usual strictness, her worry, her need to always protect her son in the name of safety and care but Jinyoung finds, instead, his mother's features softened into understanding. He remembers again that the panic and fear has been swirling over the entire town, that everyone’s been drinking it into their lungs, that everyone’s scared. That his mother, nodding at him, granting him permission, needed only to gather his broken sentences to understand what he meant. 

Jinyoung gnaws on his lip, though he has no time for reflection, has no time to understand it himself, so he tugs open the door and runs out. Waiting at the edge of the street would aggravate his nerves, so he runs in the direction of Bambam’s house, just like he did on the night of the concert. He runs like there are people chasing him — and there might be — and he runs as if the end to this nightmare were a destination. He runs until he's gasping, until his legs are about to give out, until his heart is punching his ribs, and then he runs some more. 

He runs until a van's headlights flood his vision, and then he stops, sprints to the door, crashes against the metal — cool under his fingers. He pulls open the door on the side, leaps inside. 

For a moment there's no sound, just his gasps filling the space of the van. But this begins to settle, his breathing slows, his heartbeat finds its old rhythm. Only then does he climb into a seat and click on the seat-belt, though the van no longer moves. Only then does he look up to where Youngjae and Bambam are staring in his direction.

It's Youngjae that breaks the silence. 

"What the fuck is going on?" 

"I — I don't know — Nayeon started the fire?!" 

Youngjae narrows his eyes, Bambam stays silent. 

"You would know more, you're the one rubbing shoulders with them." 

"With who?!"

"Jaebum! And Nayeon! And Wonpil!" 

The last name makes Jinyoung shudder. He lowers his gaze, folds his arms. 

"What do you mean Wonpil?" 

Silence swims in the van again, and when he looks back up, Youngjae and Bambam share a look. Then Bambam turns to face him, looks pained. 

"It's more of a theory," he says, "Two weeks before our match, I saw him in the parking lot. He was really mad, looked really scary. It was when Youngjae was sick, I was waiting for my mom to pick me up so I had to stay out there. He was yelling, but since he was far away I couldn't hear what about. It looked like he was yelling at the wall."

This confuses Jinyoung more than it clarifies things. 

"Maybe he has anger issues — how does that make him guilty of anything?" 

Though, in the back of his head, he sees Jackson's body, bathed in red, framed in a rear-view mirror. All of his thoughts keep pointing at this image like fingers, pleading with him, insisting: this, this is what makes Wonpil guilty. But his mind is too cluttered to make sense, he still can't tell up from down, enemy from friend. 

Youngjae says, "Tell him about after." 

Bambam hesitates, and as he speaks he shakes his head, as if he wasn't sure of what he saw. As if his memories were unreliable. Still, he looks up at Jinyoung, all worried, wide eyes, all fear, "My mom finally came and when we were driving away, I looked back to where Wonpil was. He was gone, but I saw who he was yelling at: Nayeon. She looked just as mad as him." 

"They must have fought about something — but then he offered to give you a ride after the match, which we thought meant they were on good terms," Youngjae adds in, "And now Nayeon is the one that started the fire, and Wonpil has no alibi. I guess they were on better terms than we thought."

"This is crazy," Jinyoung says, "How — how can you be so sure? What if Nayeon didn't do it?!" 

"And what if she did!" Youngjae yells, "And what if Wonpil was involved?! And what if Jaebum is involved, too?!" 

"Jaebum didn't do anything!" 

"Then how do you explain the change?! He just went to sleep one day a loser and woke up a Grease-reject?!" 

"Jaebum is not a loser!" 

Jinyoung lunges forward but gets caught by the seat-belt, not that Youngjae flinches. Only Bambam reacts, lifts an arm between them as if Youngjae and Jinyoung might start fighting in the car. Jinyoung settles in his seat again, but he feels dizzy. 

He is suddenly thirteen again, defending Jaebum from his friends. Jaebum, his best friend, the smartest person he knows, easily a prodigy. Jaebum who, from one day to the next, starts failing every class until Jinyoung starts doing his homework for him while Jaebum sleeps his days away. Jaebum whose growth is stunted, who has been thrown into a hole he can’t climb out of, not without a hand pulling him up. Jaebum, who smiles and goes into the bathroom to cry as Jinyoung tries not to notice, who sometimes says Jinyoung's name at night when he sleeps over, his voice shaky, broken, while Jinyoung pretends to sleep, afraid of what Jaebum might confess. Jaebum, who starts to reek of the past, of wasted potential, scents that drive Jinyoung away because Jinyoung is dumb and young and so, so afraid.

Then he is eighteen again and has to lift his hands to his cheeks, has to touch his tears with the tips of his fingers to make sure that they're real, that he's actually crying.

"I think Jaebum died," he says out loud, mostly to himself, but to Youngjae and Bambam, too. 

He feels exhausted from carrying around so much, not just these recent events, but all these years in his life, years crammed full with secrets and little white lies and pain that never makes it to the surface. His mother was this way, had never even told Jinyoung that his father had left her but lied and said he was on a business trip that never seemed to end, no matter how much he looked out the window at their driveway, waiting for him to come home. He learned from her how to keep his image like she kept a home: the hedges neat, trimmed, every flaw shoved under rugs, every heavy emotion locked in closets that were never to be opened, no matter how much the door trembled with rage, no matter how sad the rattling sounded. 

But now, his friends look at him confused, their expressions threaded with such a delicate worry that Jinyoung has no option but to open drawers and unlock doors and hand them what he knows of the fire, the concert, Wonpil, Jaebum, even Nayeon. 

He starts from the beginning, from the pig to the smoke from the fire, curling into a violet sky. Then he tells them about Nayeon's boyfriend, about the mountain, his night with Jaebum, even his confession. And, last, he tells them about Jackson — both his appearance and Wonpil's blindness. When he's done, he feels empty, free and empty and he would smile if Youngjae and Bambam weren't staring at him as if he'd just revealed every last secret to the universe. 

Then, as always, Youngjae starts yelling, "Are you fucking crazy?! You almost fucked a demon?!" 

"He's not a demon!" 

They start to yell at each other, their voices angry and tangled and full of every emotion they can muster. Their voices cloud up the van like strange weather until Bambam starts screaming, not words, but a guttural sound that Jinyoung and Youngjae are forced to sit back and listen to. Then Bambam points a finger at both of them.

"Both of you — stop," he says, stern and so unlike himself. Then he turns to Jinyoung and his voice softens, "Do you love Jaebum?" 

"What kind of question is —" 

"Do you love him?" 

Jinyoung swallows, steadies his gaze. Bambam gives him no time to think, but he realizes now, without the clutter in his mind, he doesn't have to think. "Of course — he's my best friend." 

He smiles, proud of himself, and expects Bambam to do the same but neither of his friends share the same joy. Instead they look between each other, their faces tenderly arranged into pity. 

Then, even softer, Bambam says, "I don't think that's Jaebum anymore."

"What are you saying?" Jinyoung asks, and Youngjae answers. 

"What he's saying is this: that thing might have Jaebum's body, his thoughts, his urges, even his feelings, but that's not Jaebum. I mean — we didn't get along, but I don't think Jaebum would kill anyone." 

"Who did he kill?! He's the victim." 

"Don't you get it? The bodies with the cuts the police found?! They didn't die in the fire — they were killed, Jinyoung. Murdered and cut afterwards. And if they're the men that did that to Jaebum, I'm pretty sure whatever got into him was getting revenge. That's not Jaebum.”

But Jinyoung, exhausted from such a long day, has had enough, at least for now. He simply shakes his head, keeps the thought of Jaebum — his best friend, Jaebum — at bay, as if the less he thinks of it, the less true it might become. If he doesn't think of Jaebum on that night, Jaebum will still be in his house, or in his car, smoking weed, listening to trot music, waiting for somebody or something to finally listen. 

Then Youngjae sighs and the air becomes lighter. He faces the road again, turns the key in the ignition and the van rumbles to a start. 

"We have to get home — we can figure the rest of it out tomorrow." 

Bambam, though, doesn't turn around. He reaches back towards Jinyoung, stretches his thin, tiny frame to rest his hand on top of Jinyoung's. And then he smiles, a shape so unexpected that Jinyoung sees it as light, a small lantern in an otherwise bleak moment. Then the smile breaks apart, gives way to another expression. Bambam pulls his hand away and reaches at his legs, through his backpack, then takes out a necklace, hands it to Jinyoung.

He runs the rosary between his fingers, dark wood, lightweight, feels like air in the palm of his hands. 

"That'll keep you safe," Bambam says, "We're wearing one, too." 

Jinyoung puts it around his neck, then looks at Youngjae in the rear-view mirror, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration as if driving to Jinyoung's house were an impossible mission and then he looks at Bambam who looks at both sides of the street, his head turning just an inch, as if searching for omens. 

Again, he is grateful for them, for their company. The weight of it all, split into three, is still overwhelming, but it no longer feels impossible. There will be and end to this, he realizes. There will be a conclusion.

—

Back at home, he does his best to toe his way up the stairs without making noise. The house is dark with all its lights turned off, and his mother, who rarely wakes up for anything, snores from her bedroom on the first floor. Still, the old house groans and creaks, as if complaining that Jinyoung is walking through it at such a late hour. Each step makes him flinch until he steps inside his room.

He turns on the light in time to see Jaebum limping his way. 

It isn't the old Jaebum, nor is it the new Jaebum: he has bags under his eyes, looks sick and pale, and when he's close enough for Jinyoung to reach up and stroke his cheek, he feels cold. 

"Jinyoung," he gasps, almost collapses, and Jinyoung leads him to the bed, sits him down on the edge. There is so much he wants to say, so much he needs to ask, but Jaebum looks so pained that his expression fills every corner of Jinyoung's mind. There is no disaster outside, only his best friend in need, aching in his room.

"Jaebum, what's wrong — what are you doing here?" 

"They're at my house," Jaebum whispers, then closes his eyes. His back curves, his head hangs between his shoulders. Jinyoung thinks he might have fallen asleep until he straightens up suddenly and tries to scratch at his back.

"Who is them?" Jinyoung asks when Jaebum turns and crawls into bed, lays flat on his stomach. 

" _ Them _ ," Jaebum answers, then groans, "I don't feel so good." 

Jinyoung stands at the foot of the bed, too stunned to move. 

"What's wrong?" he asks again. 

"I don't feel good," Jaebum is groaning again, "I'm so hungry."

Jaebum goes back to trying to scratch his back, then finally manages to catch the bottom of his shirt between his fingers. He pulls it up and Jinyoung's breath catches in his throat. Jaebum's flesh is pale and dull and every bump of his spine bulges against his skin. He can reach over and touch every bone, horribly exposed, curving almost cruelly. Then Jaebum stops scratching and he makes another sound, not a groan this time, but a mewl. He's in pain. 

Jinyoung leans forward to try and help him but he stops when he sees something move on Jaebum's back. 

At first he thinks he's seeing things, that maybe Jaebum had breathed and his back had stretched and readjusted, but then he sees the shadow again. It's light, to the right of his spine, gentle at first, shapeless. Something pressing up against his skin but as Jinyoung inches closer, he can see another shadow start to form on the other side. Then there's three, then four, and by the time the fifth one surfaces, Jinyoung can make out the shape of each hand reaching out from underneath Jaebum's skin. All the while, with each new finger attempting to rip him apart and escape, Jaebum keeps whimpering, small, tiny sounds that wade in Jinyoung's ear and makes his chest tight. 

His stomach twists with fear, but Jaebum is in pain, Jaebum is almost crying, so Jinyoung reaches forward and grabs his foot and every single hand sinks into Jaebum’s flesh until there's nothing left but the shadowy outline of his spine. 

He pulls his hand away and steps back and Jaebum stirs, now quiet, silent. He inches backwards toward the edge of the bed. Once there he stands, turns around, each movement robotic, as if he has to think: move this hand, twist this leg, turn the head. Then Jaebum is facing him with a quiet smile.

"Jinyoung," he says, "You're my best friend." 

He still looks sick, his eyes sunken, his cheeks hollow, his lips dry and cracked and his eyes are dark, lifeless. Jinyoung steps back until he hits the wall and Jaebum closes the distance between them in clumsy steps. His hands rise, hold Jinyoung's cheeks and his fingers are cold, so cold, and Jaebum's eyes are wide but hold no reflections. They have no light, as if someone has cut out two holes where they should be.

"You're my best friend," he says again, whispers it, as if the edges of his words were scratching against his throat, "Aren't you?" 

"Y - yes, Jaebum, I'm your best friend," Jinyoung whispers. Jaebum's hold gets tighter around his cheeks and he leans in closer. Jinyoung expects to feel him breathe, if not through his nose then through his open mouth but he feels nothing. Jaebum is completely still.

"I'm hungry, Jinyoung, can you help me?" 

Jinyoung, not knowing what to do, feeling stupid and impotent and afraid, just nods. Then Jaebum's eyes open wider, his lips twist into another smile. He comes even closer, as if to kiss Jinyoung, but his lips are too far apart, too open, and just when he's about to make contact, he pauses again. 

He steps back, lets his hands drop and Jinyoung breathes again. Jaebum's eyes remain wide, but now they look scared, hopeless. He turns to the right, then looks down at his feet. 

"They're here," he whispers, not to Jinyoung, but to himself. Without another word, he turns around and crawls over the bed on using hands and feet, his body moving like an animal, quick as he heads to the window. In two breaths, he's crossed it and jumped out. Jinyoung, now flush with adrenaline, tries to follow, sticks his head but there is nothing to see. There is nobody there, not under the window or around or above or even in the distance. 

The air sits as still as a tomb. 

—

That night he sleeps with the window propped open, though he doesn't get much rest. He sleeps for minutes at a time, waking for every little sound — the tick of a clock downstairs, his mother opening the door to her room, closing it, the rustle of cats in the bushes outside, even his own breathing makes him nervous. His mind flutters from empty to overwhelmed, terrified to innocently calm, and by the time he finally gets to deep sleep, his thoughts swimming through a black expanse, his alarm clock wakes him up. 

Downstairs he finds that normal life goes on: his mother greets him and doesn't mention last night or any of the events, drives him to school like usual, gives him a lunch packed into a brown paper bag. She drives off, the school hums with the sound of students, with the squeak of shoes in the hall, the lockers stuck in an endless loop of closing and opening. 

But normal life ends when he finds Bambam waiting for him at his locker. He looks worried, antsy, leans on one foot then the other, right to left, right to left, it almost makes him dizzy. Then Bambam spots him and scurries over and Jinyoung, fearing the worst, takes a step back. 

"Let's go to the bathroom," Bambam whispers loudly, "We need to talk." 

They stuff themselves into a single stall in the empty boys bathroom, Jinyoung perched on the closed toilet, Bambam standing in front of him, looking smaller with the stall door behind him, with the dark walls on either side. For the longest time, he's silent and his body does the talking: his eyebrows push together, his eyes well up with tears, then go dry again; his nostrils tighten with a sniffle; he holds a textbook to his chest, his knuckles white with how tight he's grabbing. Ages seem to pass by, might keep passing by in silence if Jinyoung doesn't say anything. 

"What did you want to talk about?" 

Bambam heaves a sigh, then looks to the floor. 

"Me and Youngjae were eavesdropping again and — they found two bodies — they were —" 

He mouths the words but the sounds don't come out. Then he pauses, finds his voice again. 

"Two bodies. Brutal bite marks. One looked torn apart. Both young — only one was identified so far. They found it this morning — Mark Tuan, the son of the police chief." 

Jinyoung's heart starts to race, he starts to sweat. His stomach, suddenly, feels as heavy as stone.

"A - are you sure?"

Bambam nods, then Jinyoung notices a tear has slipped out of his eye, curls around his cheek. 

"Youngjae thinks it's Jaebum and — I'm just warning you, he doesn't know we're here but we talked about it, but he wants — he thinks you should kill Jaebum." 

"What?! I'm not going to kill anybody — how does he even know that was Jaebum?" 

Bambam shrugs, wipes at his wet cheek. 

"I'm just warning you," he says, "That he's going to suggest it. I — I don't want that to happen, but you know Youngjae. Don't tell him we met. I'll see you at lunch." 

Jinyoung nods, watches Bambam rub his arms then pat his thighs until he turns around and leaves just as the bell for the first class rings. The hallways are empty now except for the stray late student, and Jinyoung, who before would never even dream of being late, drags his feet as he walks to his locker. To his surprise, though he's sure he can't be surprised anymore, too weary for such an unexpected emotion, there's a cheerleader by his locker. He thinks she must be late, but she doesn't seem to move, instead leans against the wall. 

When he gets closer, he recognizes Mina. Their eyes meet and she smiles. 

"Jinyoung," she says and he tries to ignore the chill that climbs his spine. He goes to his locker, ignores her presence, though the blue cheer outfit she wears demands his attention. 

"You know my name?" he asks. 

"Of course, Jinyoung," she says with a tiny laugh, "We went to elementary school together, then middle school, then high school. It's not a big town, silly." 

Jinyoung just nods, tries to focus on organizing his book, wasting time until she leaves. He won't go to his first class, he decides. He'll hide in the bathroom. He'll take a moment to clear his head.

"Can I help you?" he asks, flips his history book upside down, then flips it upright again. He hears Mina stand up straight, hears her steps as she moves away from the lockers, and he almost expects her to leave as strangely as she'd arrived. As if she were nothing more than a ghost, confused as to who to haunt, lost in the hush of the hallway. 

"I just wanted to tell you there's a full moon tonight." Her voice is less friendly, more genuine, though it doesn't scare him. It glitters like a knife, but doesn't carry the same danger. Halfway down the hall — he's staring at her now — she speaks again, louder, filling the hallway with her voice. "Don't look too closely." 

She turns the hallway and then she's gone, leaving behind a confused Jinyoung. Confused, worried, and petrified, and he can't shake the feeling that, perhaps, everything  _ is _ happening to him. That he is the one being haunted, the one being tortured, the one having to carry every consequence as of late. He goes back to his locker but he no longer messes with the book. Instead he bites his bottom lip, tries not to cry, not here, at school. He's allowed at least one preservation of image, he tells himself, one single chance to be private.

—

By lunch, the fear has mostly simmered down. He still feels it there, throbbing beneath everything else, like hands roaming his skin, but he can function. He can act, he can pretend, and he can hope that the day doesn't throw anything else his way. But whatever deity he's been praying to doesn't listen. It might actually hate him, too, because when he steps into the lunchroom and walks to the usual table, the same table as yesterday, the same table he'll walk to tomorrow, Jaebum is there.

He's not sitting, no, just standing in front of it, smiling, waiting. When Jinyoung gets closer, he realizes that he's the one Jaebum is waiting for. 

In the light of the lunchroom, Jaebum looks good: dressed all in back, a buttoned shirt, tucked in, belted, and his skin has recovered some of its color. His face, too, looks fuller, healthier, and his eyes look incessantly bright. With every step in his direction, Jaebum's smile gets wider and wider until Jinyoung stops in front of him and that smile has ballooned into a grin — handsome and horsey and terrifying. And that smell, that smell of lust and attraction, that smell that had replaced the smell of weed, returns. It climbs up Jinyoung's nose, replaces the knot of fear in his stomach with flutters. 

"Jaebum," Jinyoung says, though it sounds like a gasp — like he's scared, "I thought you — are you feeling okay?" 

Behind Jaebum, sitting at the table, Bambam and Youngjae stare in his direction. Bambam leans to the right, Youngjae to the left so they almost look like Jaebum's minions. 

"Yes," Jaebum answers, "I feel so good, Jinyoung. Better than I've ever felt — I was wondering, you want to go to the park tonight?" 

Jinyoung glances at his friends: Bambam is shaking his head, looks fearful, and Youngjae is nodding his head, looks determined. Unsure of how to proceed, he looks back at Jaebum, traces his jaw with his gaze, lets that bump on his nose lead his head into a tiny nod. 

"Sure," he breathes and Jaebum's eyes almost glow with joy. They look warm, Jinyoung thinks, like tiny embers are hiding in the dark of them, like a fire had wafted in there and got stuck. Then Jaebum takes a step closer to him and takes a lock of Jinyoung's hair between his fingers. He plays with the bit of hair, then presses his finger against Jinyoung's cheek, grazing it, before he takes Jinyoung's chin between his thumb and forefinger. 

The scene from last night repeats itself, with Jaebum coming closer and closer, his gaze moving from right to left, as if unsure of which of Jinyoung's eyes to focus on. Yet, unlike last night, Jinyoung feels every breath against his lips, against his cheeks, and unlike last night, Jaebum's eyes start to close in fragments of a second. Jinyoung's do the same, and by the time Jaebum kisses him, there in a full cafeteria, in front of Bambam and Youngjae, in front of the world, he sees little fires behind his eyes, like a small galaxy of stars. 

Then Jaebum pulls away and Jinyoung opens his eyes and the clatter of the world returns to him, garish and loud. Jaebum just grins, another bright fixture in the world, like a flame that won't go out.

"I'll pick you up at sundown," he says and Jinyoung nods, now suddenly timid at this sweet distraction. He looks at Bambam and Youngjae who stare with wide eyes, their lips parted, mouths full of surprise. When he sits down, Bambam looks away, but Youngjae faces him directly, his face stern. 

"You have to stab him." 

"What?! I'm not going to stab Jaebum."

"That's not Jaebum, you have to stab him. Tonight. At sundown." 

Jinyoung just shakes his head, pulls open his lunch, pulls out his sandwich: slices of turkey fit between provolone. No note falls out, and when he reaches into the paper bag, he can't find it, which leaves him with the sensation of being alone, without guidance. 

"You have to end it, Jinyoung. For him. Put him out of his misery." 

"He's not — he's not in misery, Youngjae." Though he has to avoid his gaze because his mind fills with the images of last night; the pallor; the sickness; the crazed eyes; the fevered walk; the almost kiss, almost bite; the hands swimming beneath Jaebum's skin. He shakes his head again, as if the images could fall out  from his head, as if they were just there, dangling in his hair, like threads torn from an old sweater. But nothing falls out — the images remain, branded into the back of his eyes. Still, he insists, "I'm not going to kill him, no matter what you say." 

"You don't know, huh? About the bodies?" 

"I do." 

"Bambam told you?"

From the corner of his eyes, he sees Bambam flinch. But Jinyoung shakes his head, "I heard it from someone else."

"No, you fucking heard it from Bambam. I bet he didn't tell you the rest of it." 

Jinyoung just looks up and tries to glare, but Youngjae, though younger than him, has always had the more potent stare. He, out of all of them, is sure of who he is. He doesn't doubt, doesn't hesitate. He simply is. And Jinyoung, still learning to navigate this new state of openness, like a calf learning to stand at the same time as his legs, is the one who retreats. He looks down at his sandwich, forces himself to take a bite.

"Bambam won't tell you, but I will. You know what else happened? Besides two people being murdered? Nayeon was released. She wasn't even held for an hour — she had an alibi that checked up. She was with her boyfriend and with a friend. They had proof, receipts, the whole deal. Bowling, can you believe that?" 

He forces himself to chew, though the action is mechanical. Everything is mechanical, now, he thinks. Even his breaths, even his gaze, his life. He wonders when he'd broken down, or if it has always been this way. He swallows, looks up at Youngjae. 

"And?" 

Youngjae's cheeks flush and he leans in, spits out loud, angry whispers.

"What do you mean  _ and _ ?! You don't think you're going to get ambushed? Don't you think you might be next?" 

"I — Jaebum wouldn't let that happen."

"You're right," Youngjae sighs, throws his arms up, "Too bad he's dead." 

They sit in silence for what seems like ages. Jinyoung finishing his sandwich, Youngjae pretending to read, Bambam wringing his fingers under the table. Then he looks up at Jinyoung and half-mumbles, "At least take your rosary. We made sure it got blessed." 

Jinyoung nods. When it's time to leave, though, Youngjae walks around the table, gives Jinyoung a hug. He barely has time to return it, and by the time he raises his arms, Youngjae is gone, Bambam trailing behind him. Jinyoung is left to grapple with the feeling of things ending, but it doesn't last long. 

He skips his next class — skips the entire day. Instead he walks out to the football field, to the edge, beneath the bleachers where he knew Jaebum had started hanging out a few years ago. 

Of course he doesn't find him there, doesn't expect to, not this new Jaebum. But he finds his old friends: Hoseok and Hyunwoo, boys who, at their age, were veterans of school. Nobody knew how old they were but Jinyoung had heard rumors of twenty, which he didn't believe until he'd seen them walking down the hallway, two beefy bodies that had no business cramming themselves into school corridors.

Dirt crunches beneath his feet, but neither Hoseok or Hyunwoo look up. They're sitting to the side, staring into space. Hyunwoo he knows, regrettably, from having to wait for Jaebum to finish smoking in Hyunwoo's car before giving him a ride. It's him he directs himself to. 

"Hyunwoo, hey, I need a favor." 

After a second, Hyunwoo looks up, delayed, "Hey, Jinyoung. Sure — Jaebum's boyfriend is like our boyfriend." 

Hyunwoo smiles at this, as if proud to have remembered this detail. Jinyoung, though, uncomfortable just skipping class, takes no time in correcting him.

"Yeah, actually, he told me to find you. He needs a fix." 

"Sure, how much?" Hyunwoo says, pats Hoseok's leg who, after a few seconds himself, reaches for his backpack. 

"Um, the usual?" Jinyoung panics, though he hides it by fanning his face, as if it's hot. Neither of the other boys seem to notice, though. Hoseok pulls out a flask meant for soup, twists the cap, takes out two dark baggies and hands them to Jinyoung. He thought drugs would burn in his hand, that they would be heavy from the sheer weight of stigma, but the two bags are light. Smell bad, of course, but they fit easily into his pocket. 

"Do I owe you anything?" 

Hyunwoo waves his hand before Jinyoung is even done asking. 

"Anything for Jaebum. Tell him to come by himself, we miss him." 

"He doesn't hang out with you guys?" 

"No, not for a while," Hyunwoo says and Hoseok looks almost sad. Then Hyunwoo stirs, as if remembering something. "Hey, you're friends with Nayeon, right?"

“Yeah, we're on the mathlete team together."

"Tell her to come by some time, too. Put in a good word for me. She's cute." 

"She has a boyfriend," Jinyoung says, turning to leave, "Thanks for everything." 

"That's fine," Hyunwoo answers, then starts to laugh and between breaths he says, "Tell him to come, too. It'll be a party."

Hoseok makes a tiny sound, then starts laughing, too. Jinyoung just rolls his eyes, hears their laughter echoing in his ears long after he leaves school. 

— 

Jaebum pulls up just as the street lamps turn on, and this precision might have scared JInyoung before, but he finds that little scares him now. Not the quiet roar of the car, not Jaebum driving without music, not his tight grip on Jinyoung’s thigh. Not even the park, eerily quiet and alone, closer to the edge of town, enough that Jinyoung sees the forest in the distance but still feels nestled in the bustle of the small town. As much as it bustles, at least. 

They don’t say much on the ride over, not until Jaebum slides the car into the parking lot. And even then, nothing is spoken, but Jaebum says so much in the way he keeps looking over at Jinyoung, smiling, grinning, studying him as he were a prize while Jinyoung tries not to notice. Jinyoung’s wearing a jacket, a flimsy little thing, and he’s shoved the baggies of weed in the inner pocket, not a lot but enough —  definitely more than JInyoung would ever imagine he’d carry. 

Then Jaebum clears his throat, and Jinyoung looks over. He feels attracted still, to the shape of his jaw, the sharp eyes, but after so much overthinking and running the thought of Jaebum through his fingers like a puzzle piece he can’t seem to place, his attraction starts to make sense. 

Jaebum hadn’t changed, not physically —  he’d always had that jaw, that nose, that small mouth with lips that flit from thin to full as if it were changing moods. What changes, though, is how much attention is drawn to those details, how it’s presented. The glow Jaebum wears now just highlights everything Jinyoung had tried not to notice growing up. Everything that made his heartbeat quicken, that stopped his breath at his throat. 

“What are you staring at?” Jaebum teases through that sideways smile and Jinyoung just smiles back. He remembers Youngjae’s words, his insistence that Jaebum is gone, that his double is nothing but a better replica; improved, renewed; everything Jinyoung might have wished for years ago, even a few months ago.

It had come true, but at a cost, and it’s not the disaster that weighs most heavily on his heart. It’s the loss of Jaebum. He can’t change people, he thinks, he can’t even change himself. Because people don’t change, not like this: nobody can cut open their chest and take out their heart, clean it, put it back, leave only what they want and discard the rest. No, he thinks, people have to grow, shed skin. He can’t prune a new person like a tree, he can’t burn away their flaws. 

“Maybe we should get out,” Jaebum says, pulls JInyoung out of his thoughts. 

“Why did you want to come here?” he hears himself ask, as if miles away. He thinks of the murders, almost shudders. He doubts he would be next though, and Jaebum confirms it when he fishes out a condom and a little packet of lube from his pocket. 

“Wanted to have some fun,” Jaebum says, then adds, “With my best friend.” 

Questions still bounce around in his head, sound like children running up and down the steps, bare feet smacking against wood, but he manages to quiet them enough to look around. He notices how clean the car is, nothing out of place. Even the backseat has no clutter, just a folded blanket that Jaebum pulls into the front. 

“To lay down in,” he explains and Jinyoung keeps looking around, opens the glove compartment to dig around the stack of papers — the only mess that’s managed to survive — until he finds what he’s looking for: little squares of paper, almost transparent. He pulls them out, shoves them into his pocket as well.

“What’s that for?”

“I thought we could smoke,” he says, places a hand on the door handle, “You ready?” 

They find a secluded little patch of grass, away from any paths, away from the center, nestled in a cluster of trees. Jinyoung looks around, nervous. Even though the park is empty, he still feels watched, exposed. Jaebum lays out the blanket on the grass and they sit on it, their legs crossed, their eyes on each other. The moon is full, bright, seems so close that everything is lit in lovely shades of blue. Jaebum’s eyes drink up all the light, have a tiny glint in them — dull but there, almost pulsing. He sets the condom and lube beside him, and Jinyoung does the same with the weed, the papers. 

“Do you have a lighter?” Jinyoung asks and Jaebum pulls one out of his jacket pocket, before he takes the entire thing off, throws it behind him. Staring at Jaebum, facing his smile, his unwavering gaze, Jinyoung has the feeling that he’s playing a game. Something strategic, something with steps, like chess. He might have to stay a move ahead, he thinks, if he has any hopes of proving that Jaebum is still there, floating around, swimming through whatever darkness took hold of his body.

“Do you know about the murders?” Jinyoung asks and Jaebum’s smile dims. 

“Sure,” he says and his voice sounds sharp, slices through the air between them, “What about them?” 

“Mark was ripped in half,” Jinyoung says, reaching over to the weed. He does his best to mimic what he’d seen Jaebum do once when he thought Jinyoung wasn’t looking. It had been after school, Jinyoung had left class early, had gone directly to Jaebum’s car. He was quiet, though, and had seen Jaebum’s fingers working, twisting paper around green, making three rolls he put in his pocket. 

Jinyoung tries to make one now, but his roll is neither neat nor tight, but it will do. As he rolls another one, he adds, “They found bite marks all over him. Chunks missing.” 

“Maybe he deserved it,” Jaebum answers, sighing almost in pleasure, as if remembering a pleasant dream, “Maybe he should have been more careful about what he was doing. Who he was doing it with.” 

Jinyoung ignores the chill that wraps around his spine, like cold fingers running up each bone. He looks up and Jaebum is grinning, amused. He reaches over, hands him a blunt. Jaebum puts it between his fingers, then Jinyoung reaches for the lighter. 

“Did you have anything to do with it?” 

Jaebum keeps looking his way. He’s having fun, Jinyoung thinks. This whole thing is fun for him. It’s only Jinyoung’s heart that races, thumps with fear. 

“Maybe,” Jaebum says, the blunt moving as he talks, “You’re asking so many questions.” 

“I’m curious,” Jinyoung lies, then flicks on the lighter and Jaebum lights up in shades of orange. The shadows make his face look longer than it is, almost demonic. He fights the urge to look away, instead focuses on the miniature flames in Jaebum’s eyes. They never stop looking at each other, holding each other’s stare, but Jinyoung doesn’t get the chance to light the blunt. Jaebum pulls it from his lips with a finger, swats Jinyoung’s hand away. 

“What if I don’t want to smoke?” 

This he doesn’t expect. Jaebum always wants to smoke, no matter the reason, the occasion, and this, above all things, makes it certain that something  _ has  _ changed.

“But I want you to smoke,” Jinyoung whispers, tries to smile, tries to be the old him: friendly, shy, “With me.” 

Something passes over Jaebum’s features, like a cloud blotting out a moon. Then he  says, low, “I can think of a few things I want, too.”

“What are they? If you smoke for me, I’ll do something for you.” 

Jaebum holds his gaze, and even when the lighter clicks off, Jinyoung swears something keeps shining in his eyes. But he has to look down where Jaebum unfolds his legs, stretches them out so his feet are on either side of Jinyoung. Then his fingers undo the button of his jeans, pull them down to his knees. Again, he wears no underwear, and Jinyoung is left to admire his smooth thighs, squared with lean muscle. Then Jaebum pulls up his shirt so his cock is visible in the moonlight, soft, limp, curved like its asleep. 

He puts the blunt back between his lip and reaches out his hand to take the lighter from Jinyoung. He sets it aside, and Jinyoung reaches forward, figures that he wants another handjob but Jaebum swats his hand again.

“No,” his voice is low, jagged, nears a growl, “I want more than that.” 

Jinyoung watches Jaebum’s hand as it gets closer, two fingers loosely stretched. He touches Jinyoung’s lips and it feels warm, sends a tiny spark down his spine. He figures this is it but Jaebum keeps pushing his fingers inside, to his tongue, and Jinyoung tastes him. 

Then, with the low volume of a moan, Jaebum says, “Suck.” 

His eyes feel stuck to Jaebum’s because he can’t look away, even as his tongue darts forward to lick the pads of Jaebum’s fingers, licks between them, over his nails. The fingers keep moving on his tongue, Jaebum leaning forward, and Jinyoung’s lips wrap around them. He sucks, as best as he knows how, sucks until he finds a subtle taste, barely there, and he keeps sucking. Jaebum seems to want to fit their entire length in him and Jinyoung, inexperienced, confused by the desire that wafts in him like a breeze, gags for a second, then keeps sucking. Jaebum, excited by the noise, reaches down and starts to stroke himself but Jinyoung can no longer see.

His eyes close and his world becomes Jaebum’s fingers, his tongue swirling around them, his mouth trying to suck, saliva dotting the corners of his lips. Then his chin feels wet and he realizes he’s drooling and the sound, clumsy and wet, fills his ears. Jaebum shoves his fingers back until he gags again then pulls them out. Jinyoung reaches up to touch his throat, opens his eyes.

Jaebum’s gaze has darkened, his head tilted forward gently so all the light from the moon misses his eyes. 

“Now the real thing,” he says and kicks off his shoes, folds his legs to take off his jeans. Then he leans his weight back on his hands, presents himself like a meal and Jinyoung’s mouth waters. He looks down at Jaebum’s erection, almost pretty in the moonlight, the tip of the head glistening where some come had leaked out. He should feel repelled, he thinks, and disgusted, though he can’t help the need that wrenches his gut. That makes his thoughts loose, makes his heart race, makes his throat tight as if he’s already gagging again. He’s human, after all, but he does manage to shake his head. 

“Smoke,” Jinyoung commands, but without Jaebum’s strength of tone. His voice feels flimsy in his throat, but Jaebum still reaches for the blunt, for the lighter, eyes never leaving Jinyoung. Once lit, he presses his lips around it. The blunt burns bright orange, then yellow, then disappears again. Jaebum keeps his mouth closed, then after a second, the smoke comes rushing out of his nose. 

“Another one,” Jinyoung says, “Take another hit.”

Jaebum shakes his head. “Suck me off while I smoke.”

He leans back again and Jinyoung lowers himself to his elbows. He crawls closer, until his head is between Jaebum’s thighs and then he breathes in the new scent: there’s sweat, but a sweet kind, a kind that rises into his nose and makes his own cock harden. A smell that reduces Jinyoung to the most basic primal desires; he leans forward and swirls his tongue around the tip of Jaebum’s cock, watches the visible patch of stomach tense, then soften. 

Jaebum resumes his breathing, and Jinyoung resumes his licking. He thinks this might be what a blowjob is, just licking, first the tip, where he gets his first taste of Jaebum’s come — tastes much like his own — then the vein that wraps around it. Then he goes lower, where the skin gets wrinkly beneath his tongue, where the taste gets stronger, the scent thickens, and thin hairs press against his lips. He licks the balls, a wet stripe over them both before he takes one in his mouth, doesn’t suck but tries to move it around and Jaebum’s entire groin feels warm against his cheeks, his face. 

Then, surrendering to desire, he nuzzles his nose against Jaebum’s cock because he wants it, wants all of it, but he isn’t sure how to have it. He nuzzles it so he feels Jaebum’s dick against his face, throbbing, and tiny threads of come stick to his cheeks. He wants it so bad, he thinks, his own cock throbbing, straining against his jeans. He licks his way to the top again and wraps his lips around the head, sucks like he did Jaebum’s fingers and Jaebum sighs. Jinyoung looks up to watch him, and from this angle he looks bigger, more sinister. Jaebum’s eyes have closed, but as if knowing Jinyoung is watching him, they open. 

He catches Jinyoung’s gaze, holds it as he brings the blunt to his lips again, inhales to blow out smoke in a circle and Jinyoung’s overwhelmed. He looks back down at Jaebum’s stomach, starts to lower his head but Jaebum threads his fingers in his hair and pushes him down. His cock fills his mouth and he gags on instinct and tries to pull away but Jaebum keeps his head pressed down; he learns to adjust, learns to take a breath with his mouth full, and as soon as Jaebum loosens his hold, he lifts his head up an inch. Again, Jaebum pushes him down again, and instead of letting him pull up on his own a second time, he tugs Jinyoung’s hair and lifts his head and pushes it down and builds a rhythm that Jinyoung has to follow.

All he can do is round his lips, flatten his tongue, try not to gag each time Jaebum’s cock gets close to his throat. His arms tremble as he tries to stay propped up, off his stomach. He has to arch his back, the position uncomfortable but the reward is worth it. He tries to suck as Jaebum fucks his mouth, makes a slurping noise, wonders how something can be so warm without burning. Jaebum slows down and with the hold on his hair, he keeps Jinyoung in place and rotates his hips in a slow circle and his cock runs along the inside of Jinyoung’s cheeks, hits the roof of his mouth, makes him choke briefly. Then he pulls hard and his head twists to the side.

His cock slides along his inner cheek, makes it bulge, and Jaebum keeps it there for a second before he pulls Jinyoung’s mouth off and he gasps, catches his breath. 

Jaebum lets go of his hair and Jinyoung looks up. Jaebum’s eyes no longer glow, they look glazed, and he inhales smoke again. He blows it out in a single breath, then nods to his side.

“Put a condom on it,” he says and Jinyoung, obeying as Jaebum’s body is obeying, reaches for the condom, the packet of lube. He rips it open with his fingers and unrolls it over Jaebum’s cock, then drizzles the lube over it. He strokes it a few times, makes sure it’s coated well. Then he sits back on his heels, looks at Jaebum, waits for his guidance.

They stare at each other again and Jinyoung notices Jaebum changing. His eyes are less piercing, his face fuller, not as sharp, more endearing than handsome. It feels like the old Jaebum is returning with each hit he takes so Jinyoung lights the second blunt, hands it to Jaebum who tosses the other one into the grass. 

Then, in between hits, Jaebum says, “Don’t just sit there, ride me.” 

Jinyoung sucks in a breath, thinks to reject him, but the more he studies him, the more he looks like the old Jaebum and that’s enough reason to stand up, undo his pants, kick off his shoes. In a few movements, his lower half is bare. 

“Lean back,” he tells Jaebum and he nods, takes a final hit, tosses the blunt. He lays on his back, puts his hands behind his head and watches Jinyoung step over him. 

Jinyoung, on the other hand, is a bundle of nerves, all clumsy bones, unsure limbs. He wonders if he’s supposed to lay on him first, if they should kiss, if his heart should be beating this loud but he manages to stand over Jaebum’s groin. He stares at his cock as he lowers himself, thinks to squat, but his legs are too weak to hold him. 

He ends up on his knees, straddling Jaebum’s stomach and quickly he reaches behind him, grabs his cock, aligns it with his entrance. He lifts his hips to sit back as best as he can. Slowly Jaebum’s cock slides into him, stretches his walls like they’ve never been stretched — Jaebum’s hands reach up to hold his hips and his touch, unlike earlier, is soft, caring, almost affectionate. Even when he sinks completely down, when he’s full of Jaebum’s cock, when it fits snug inside his walls, a sweet, warm intrusion, Jaebum’s fingers linger. They caress the shape of his hips, slide over his thighs, grab a hold of them. 

He lifts his hips to readjust himself, then sinks down again, sits flush in Jaebum’s lap, settling around his cock. He’s breathless, in pain, but his cock is harder than it’s ever been. He leans forward, puts his hands on Jaebum’s chest and their gazes tangle again and this time it’s the old Jaebum staring back at him; there is no glimmer in his eye beyond the moon reflected in them; he doesn’t know how to explain it, or how he knows, but there’s a softness in them. 

Jaebum looks at him not as a prize, or treasure, but as someone familiar to him. Someone he loves very much and Jinyoung fights the urge to cry, even with Jaebum’s cock throbbing inside of him, hot and bothersome but satisfying. 

“I missed you,” he hears himself say and Jaebum tilts his head to the side. He blinks once, twice, then looks around at everything, then back at Jinyoung as if seeing him for the first time. He looks down at Jinyoung’s hands, at his own hands still holding Jinyoung’s thighs. Then Jinyoung feels him shifting his hips, as if making sure this is happening, that Jinyoung is really sitting in his lap, half naked, tight around his cock. 

“I’m inside you,” he says and Jinyoung nods, slow. He sits up and Jaebum gets buried even further inside of him, fills his spine with tiny sparks. He’s sweating, he realizes, growing hotter and Jaebum is hot, too, and he can’t tell where he ends, where Jaebum begins. He wriggles his hips as if to remind himself, feeling Jaebum’s cock press against his insides, like a match scratching the side of the matchbox, seeking fire. 

Jaebum gulps when Jinyoung wriggles his hips, then smiles. His hands move from Jinyoung’s thighs to his ass and he grabs at it, pulls his cheeks open, presses them together. Then, without warning, he sits up and Jinyoung has to extend his legs and Jaebum’s thighs press against his ass and the new angle makes Jaebum’s cock rub against a spot that makes him see a fire in the back of his eyes. On impulse he wraps his arms tight around Jaebum’s shoulders.

He takes Jinyoung’s earlobe between his teeth, nibbles on it before he whispers, “I wanted this for so long. I wanted you.”

“You have me,” Jinyoung whispers back, flattens his feet on the ground so he can try and ride him, still holding on to Jaebum. He tries to move his hips around, tries to cause friction, to keep Jaebum hard but it’s Jaebum that does most of the work. He cups his hands under Jinyoung’s ass and guides him, lifts him to lower him, first slow, then faster. Soon he’s bouncing on Jaebum’s cock and he can feel his thighs and ass jiggle and Jaebum keeps at it, bringing him down harder each time. 

After a while, Jinyoung can’t keep his eyes open, can only pant and fight the way his toes curls. Little by little, shocks start to form, first at his spine, then at his groin, and Jaebum’s cock keeps emptying him only to fill him, stroking his walls, rubbing against nerves he never knew he had. 

Then Jaebum’s hands leave his ass, go to his hips. He holds Jinyoung down against his lap and claims a kiss on Jinyoung’s neck then gasps, each breath hot against the skin there. His teeth press against his skin, too, as if biting with no pressure and Jinyoung feels Jaebum’s orgasm inside of him; the throbbing, quick at first, slowing by the second; the pulsing that remains, like a tiny heart he feels, suddenly, everywhere. He tightens his walls and Jaebum groans, and for a while that’s the only sound besides their breaths mingling in the air and the rustle of the occasional breeze.

They don’t move for whole minutes, even as Jaebum softens inside of him, even when his ass starts to feel sore, even when his legs start to tingle. Jinyoung won’t move — he’s afraid of what will happen — but Jaebum regains his senses. Jaebum kisses Jinyoung’s neck one more time and they untangle, end up laying on the blanket, side by side, looking up at the sky.

He watches Jaebum peel the condom off and throw it to the side, on the grass, and Jinyoung suddenly wishes they hadn’t used it. That his come had painted his insides, that some piece of Jaebum were buried within him because he looks distant now, almost fading. He wants to hold Jaebum close, wants to never let him go, wants to make sure that nothing bad ever happens to him again but he can’t. He feels impotent, chews on his lip, simply studies Jaebum’s profile as he catches his breath, his eyes closed.  

Somehow they’ve put their clothes back on, somehow they’ve gone back to where they were with only a fleeting glimpse at a new life. He wishes they could remain like this: laying on the blanket, hearing the distant rustle of trees, the full moon close and watching them. It looks as bright as he’s ever seen it, though he has never been one to look at the sky until recently. It looks big enough that he could reach out and touch it and he looks at Jaebum, wonders if he’s watching it, too.

He has his eyes closed so Jinyoung elbows him, whispers, “Jaebum, wake up. Look at the moon — it’s so pretty.” 

Jaebum’s eyes creak open with a hum. He looks at Jinyoung and smiles, then reaches over to play with his hair. He runs his fingers along Jinyoung’s ears and he melts into the touch, the tender caress, tracing the shape of them. Then Jaebum looks up at the moon. After a second, he squints.

“Do you see that?” 

Jinyoung looks back at the moon; some stars have peeked through; but the night is mostly a deep violet. 

“See what? The moon? It’s pretty, isn’t it?” 

“No, no, not that — shit — you don’t see that?!”

Fear comes out of hiding, assaults his body. He glances at Jaebum and notices that he’s no longer squinting. His eyes start to widen, as if drinking in the light of the moon. His lips part, his limbs stretch.

“Jaebum, are you okay?” 

He doesn’t answer and Jinyoung sits up and leans over and tries to shake him but Jaebum is not responding. His eyes have glazed over. He presses his ears against his chest and he’s still breathing, his heart still beating, but nothing else. He lifts one of his arms and it drops over Jaebum’s chest. His fingers are curled and loose, but his eyes are still torn open; his eyes reflect the entire moon in the black of them.

“Jaebum, Jaebum,” he mutters, tries shaking him again, thinks it’s a joke but Jaebum won’t respond and Jinyoung starts to cry. How quickly his life turns into a nightmare, he thinks. He must be cursed, must have a spell dangled over him but he won’t let it get Jaebum — not anymore. He stands up and does his best to pull Jaebum to his feet but his entire body is as limp as a doll so he has to drape his arms over his shoulders. He starts walking like this, back to the car, Jaebum’s feet dragging over the grass, then the dirt, then finally the cement of the parking lot. They hadn’t locked the doors so he reaches over and props it open, places Jaebum as carefully as he can in the passenger’s seat.

His heart is racing again, though it skips a few beats when Jaebum’s head rolls from one side to the other until it hangs between his shoulders, his eyes still open, lips parted, as if he’s still stuck in surprise, his mind suspended in that emotion, forever swimming in it. Jinyoung runs over to the other side and fishes the car keys from Jaebum’s pocket and tries twice to put it in the ignition before they finally slide in. He turns it, the engine roars to life.

He’s never driven before but he manages to reverse the car, then speeds out of the parking lot in bursts — he nearly hits a sign that tells him to go slow, hits the curb two times, but when he’s finally out, the rest comes naturally. He looks around, situates himself in the map of the city, glances over at Jaebum who’s body trembles with every bump in the road. 

Jinyoung swallows the knot in his throat, then looks forward at the road. He can only hope that they’re empty by now, and that no bodies are crawling out of the forest, either. He doesn’t plan to stop for anyone or anything. 

—

The hospital, like the roads, are nearly empty. It’s as if the whole town were asleep, and Jinyoung might be, too, just stuck in a nightmare. A nightmare with the limp body of his best friend in the passenger seat, a nightmare with the full moon glaring down at them. He can almost hear it laugh.

They screech to a stop in front of the hospital entrance and the sudden brake throws Jaebum’s body forward, caught only by the seat belt. Jinyoung is no longer crying — he is all adrenaline, all movement. He jumps out of the car and runs to the other side, starts yelling as he unbuckles Jaebum’s seat belt and starts pulling him out.

“Help! Somebody help! Please!”

His begs rise in the air, fill the empty night air and then, like a miracle, two women in paramedic uniforms appear. They wheel a stretcher towards him.

“What happened?” 

“I — I don’t know, we were just looking at the moon — he won’t respond — he’s still breathing —” 

The rest of his words break and fall out when he opens his lips, don’t make sense. They fall like pieces of sounds and he’s left to watch these two women put Jaebum’s body on a stretcher. They strap him in, then turn to Jinyoung. 

“You can’t leave your car there,” she says, “You have to park out back if you’re waiting for emergencies.” 

Jinyoung shakes his head, stupidly stunned, but then his body wakes up again. He runs back into the car, the engine still humming. He drives slower now, more careful, avoids hitting the few parked cars then rounds out behind the hospital. 

He spends a long time looking for the parking but it never shows up — there are no lines in the asphalt. At least Jaebum is safe, he thinks. At least he’s being treated, being healed, and this thought soothes him as he finally gives up and drives around to the front and parks next to the other cars there. Maybe he’ll get towed, he thinks, but Jaebum’s life is worth more than his car. He leaves it angled, then runs inside the hospital entrance again.

He isn’t sure of what to expect: the clatter of people dying, screaming, maybe a few people with broken bones, missing eyes. What he finds, though, is an empty waiting area and a single nurse fixing her makeup in a tiny mirror, a pair of glasses fit on top of her head. He runs to her.

“Hey — they just took my friend in here — where is he? Can I see him?” 

She checks her reflection a few seconds more, then looks up, smiles.

“When was this?” 

“Just right now — outside, the paramedics took him.” 

The nurse smiles again, then shakes her head. 

“Couldn’t be, darling, we haven’t had anyone come in for a few hours. Are you sure this is the right hospital?”

“Yes — it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes — I pulled up outside and they took him in.”

Now the nurse looks concerned, not for Jaebum, but for Jinyoung’s sanity. She squints at him, as if trying to figure him out.

“Sweetie, is everything alright? Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m fucking sure! My friend just got wheeled in! Where the fuck is he?!”

She doesn’t flinch, just smiles again, that simple smile that frustrates Jinyoung to no end, that puts fear in his throat. She sniffs the air and he takes a step back, looks both ways, tries to peer through the double doors as if they were hiding Jaebum from him.

“Our paramedics don’t wheel patients in, just transport them in ambulances and provide first-aid,” she leans in, whispers the next part, “Maybe you’re having a bad trip, sweetie. You should go home and get some rest, sleep it off.”

Jinyoung shakes his head, keeps stepping back as the nurse smiles at him, concerned, like a mother would. He keeps stepping back until he trips on one of the chairs and falls on the ground and then he slides back, almost crawling backwards until, finally, he jumps to his feet. He sprints outside to the car, throws the door open, climbs inside and starts to cry. He feels numb all over, can’t even feel his hands when he turns on the car, his fingers when he backs out, even when he hits another parked car, he feels nothing at all.

This is what Jaebum must be feeling, he thinks, and the world blurs behind a new set of tears. He wipes them away, almost hits a pole, then keeps driving through the streets, driving without thinking because he does not know what to do. His mind is empty, his options few. Yet, he finds that after a while, he isn’t driving without direction. Like a spirit crawling into a body, his focus settles in his head and he recognizes the streets, the neat row of houses, the little shrubs wearing different bursts of flowers. 

He slows to a stop in front of Youngjae’s house, spends a few minutes debating whether he should knock the door. The house seems dark, but the front window keeps flashing, like someone’s watching TV. 

Then he thinks of Jaebum and looks at the empty passenger seat, where he should be sitting right now. His best friend is missing, so he leaves the car, pounds on Youngjae’s door. Bambam answers, Youngjae still on the couch, engrossed in the movie. Then Youngjae glances his way and stands up. Soon, they’re all heading outside, locking the door behind them. 

It takes five minutes to explain his situation, which makes Youngjae yell at him.

“You should have stabbed him, right away.”

“But Jaebum is still Jaebum! And now he’s missing and it’s my fault and —” 

His hands start to shake and he shivers like he’s cold and Bambam reaches over and holds his arm, tries to soothe him. He breathes again, normally, notices how Youngjae’s anger has softened into worry.

“We’ll find him,” he says, “We have to find him before…” 

He trails off and Jinyoung doesn’t want to imagine the rest.

—

“Where is Jaebum? Can someone tell us where he is?” 

They sit in silence, then Youngjae looks over at Jinyoung. 

“It’s not working.” 

All three of them glance down at the ouija board, their fingers on the planchette, but it doesn’t move, doesn’t even warm like last time. They’ve climbed into Youngaje’s van, have tried three times to summon a spirit to find Jaebum but nothing works, not even begging or promising a sacrifice. Bambam pulls the board onto his lap, looks disappointed and Jinyoung takes the planchette.

“This stupid little thing,” he mutters, rolls down the window, throws the planchette out into the road. He hears it clatter on the road, a few seconds of sound that don’t seem to end. He thinks it must be rolling but when he peeks out, the planchette is sliding down the road in a neat little path like it’d done only a week ago. At first, it seems convenient, like a wishful mirage but Bambam and Youngjae are watching it too and say nothing, as if afraid of interrupting the magic. Slowly, Youngjae turns the van on and lets it roll along, creeping behind the planchette. 

The car is silent the entire time, their senses too focused on the planchette, their minds too crammed with all the things this could mean. The planchette leads them away from Youngjae’s neighborhood, away from downtown, closer to the edges of town, closer to the mountain. Houses here are more spread out, like weeds growing in random patches. Jinyoung only pries his eyes away from the planchette to check the names of streets, names he doesn’t recognize or has never paid attention to. Some have the names of trees — Oak, Pine, Cherry — but the planchette leads them to another batch that have names that Jinyoung can’t pronounce. He doesn’t even try because the planchette seems to be picking up speed, its scratch on the asphalt becoming louder, more insistent, like metal against rock.

Then it stops in the middle of the street and starts to shiver, tremble, then breaks in half. Jinyoung doesn’t notice this, though. He’s busy figuring out if the pig squealing is real or his imagination. 

“Do you guys hear that?” 

Bambam and Youngjae turn around, nod. 

“Follow it,” Jinyoung says and the van begins to move. 

It creeps down the road, then they turn at the end of the street and the squealing is as loud as ever, almost echoing back in their ears. The house it’s coming from looks simple, too simple to be hiding a possessed body but Bambam fishes out binoculars and each of them take a turn looking into the windows.

Jinyoung is last, and the sight makes him gasp. 

Other than the pig squealing and ramming into the wall of the house, inside, through a sliver of the curtain, he sees the paramedic women holding hands. He shifts and sees the rest of the group holding hands, all women, all surrounding Jaebum’s body. There’s someone else wearing a robe that covers their face and they have Jaebum’s head in their lap, rubbing his forehead as Jaebum writhes and trembles, looks in pain, his lips twisted around a silent scream. Jinyoung’s heart skips a beat and he puts the binoculars down.

“We have to go in there.” 

Bambam, as if responding, pulls out a gun from his backpack.

“Stole it from my uncle,” he says and Youngjae takes it from him, holds it like he’s familiar with the weight, the shape.

“We’ve been practicing,” he adds.

Jinyoung isn’t surprised or scared or dazed. Even if he makes no sound, he can hear Jaebum screaming inside his head, and that’s enough for him to take a deep breath, to take another glance at the simple little house he’s stuck in. 

“What should we do?” Bambam asks, and for once, Youngjae turns to Jinyoung, expects an answer — a command. 

* * *

 

CHOICES:

**A** : ALL THREE GO TO THE HOUSE AND LEAVE THE CAR  
 **B** : BAMBAM STAYS BEHIND, YOUNGJAE AND JINYOUNG GO  
 **C** : YOUNGJAE STAYS BEHIND, BAMBAM AND JINYOUNG GO  
 **D** : JINYOUNG GOES ALONE


End file.
